A Literary Inquisition: How Novelist Steven Galloway Was Smeared as a Rapist, Even as the Case Against Him Collapsed

On August 8, 2015, a day after the University of British Columbia announced the sudden resignation of its president, Arvind Gupta, UBC’s Jennifer Berdahl, professor in Leadership Studies in Gender and Diversity, published a blog post in which she opined that “Gupta lost the masculinity contest among the leadership at UBC, as most women and minorities do at institutions dominated by white men.”

Berdahl held the Montalbano Professorship, a position financed with a $2 million (all figures Canadian) donation from Board Of Governors Chair John Montalbano, specifically focused on “the advancement of women and diversity in business leadership.”

Montalbano called Berdahl directly and accused her of making him look like a hypocrite. He also told her that he had contacted her dean about the issue. Berdahl shot back with a second blog post that accused Montalbano of trying to silence her. “I have a right to academic freedom and expression,” she wrote, “free of intimidation and harassment.”

On August 18, the UBC board of governors convened a meeting to deal with the controversy. As Montalbano came out of the room, a reporter confronted him, followed him down the hall and out of the building to his car, while telling him he was incompetent and that it was unacceptable that he had nothing to say.

The next day, August 19, UBC’s Faculty Association published a letter, demanding that Montalbano resign. The university then appointed former B.C. Supreme Court Justice Lynn Smith to investigate the claims of infringement on Berdahl’s academic freedom.

All of this was front-page news: UBC sits at the heart of intellectual life in Vancouver, and is considered the finest university in western Canada.

In the meantime, Montalbano personally contacted former UBC President Martha Piper, who agreed to step in as Interim President in order to lead UBC through the crisis until a new president could be appointed. Piper had led UBC from 1997 to 2006, and was no stranger to controversy, having begun her original term dealing with the fallout from a 1997 conference at which police pepper-sprayed student protestors on campus. Within academic circles, Piper is widely seen as a respected university administrator, with 17 honorary degrees to her name. She served in her interim role till June, 2016, when she was succeeded by Santa J. Ono, who remains the school’s President and Vice-Chancellor.

On October 16, 2015, a month after Piper stepped in as Interim President, Madam Justice Smith released her report on Berdahl’s claim that her academic freedom had been compromised. Although no single person was to blame for what had happened, she concluded, the school as a whole hadn’t done enough to protect Berdahl.

“Sometimes,” Smith wrote, “several relatively small mistakes can lead to a failure of the larger system.” Montalbano resigned from the UBC Board of Governors the same day.

None of these events relate directly to famed Canadian novelist Steven Galloway, who was suspended from his position as chair of UBC’s Creative Writing program a month later, following the airing of thinly evidenced sexual assault allegations. But for reasons described below, they are crucial to understanding how and why UBC reacted in the disastrous way it did when the claims against Galloway emerged.

In normal times, UBC would have investigated and dismissed the claims against Galloway—as an independent investigator eventually did—while obeying something that at least approximated the norms of due process. But these were not normal times.

Thanks to the Gupta resignation, and the Berdahl-Montalbano meltdown, this had now become what was arguably the most tumultuous period at UBC since the university’s founding in the late 19th century, with the two top positions at the institution being vacated in just over three months. In addition, three Vice-Presidents had previously vacated positions under Gupta, including the Provost.

But Piper also had some good news to announce, if only she could prevent it from being overshadowed by scandal. A recently completed fundraising campaign, seven years in the making, would, by UBC’s claims, propel the university into the prestigious global ranks of Harvard and Princeton. The campaign raised $1.624 billion, exceeding the $1.5 billion goal declared a decade earlier.

Piper was set to make the announcement at the Vancouver Board of Trade on the morning of November 18. But as that date drew closer, two fresh scandals appeared.

* * *

Steven Galloway (wikicommons)

First, CBC Television’s prominent investigative show, The Fifth Estate, announced that it would be airing an exposé called School of Secrets, which contained accusations that UBC had not acted on allegations of sexual assault leveled against a UBC history department PhD candidate from Russia. The segment was scheduled to air during the same week as the fundraising announcement.

Then, on November 13, the Friday before the scheduled Board of Trade announcement, Chelsea Rooney, formerly a student in UBC’s Creative Writing Department, came forward with the shocking claim that Galloway, who had served as the UBC Creative Writing Chair since 2013, had violently raped an unnamed student four years earlier. Rooney would also make the stunning claim that she was able to bring forth no fewer than 19 other former or current UBC students who also alleged abusive behavior at Galloway’s hands.

From this point onward, Rooney would become the face of the allegations against Galloway. The woman he stood accused of raping, a former professor in her 40s, would become identified in the media only as “MC” (or Main Complainant, a term used internally at UBC).

Rooney made a voicemail available to Creative Writing Faculty that, according to the accusation, featured Galloway apologizing for raping MC. (In a subsequent investigation, it was determined that, in fact, he was apologizing for his part in their lengthy consensual affair.)

In the message, Galloway stated that he was a changed man. He also requested that he be the one to break the news of his behavior—which he recognized as improper—to his mentor, former Creative Writing Department Chair Keith Maillard.

“I think actually what I’m asking for is maybe a chance, if you wish it, for me to turn myself in,” Galloway said on the voicemail. “Keith’s opinion of me matters a great deal to me, and I’m pretty ashamed of the way I used to be and act. I can assure you that I am no longer that way.”

This voicemail was presented as evidence to support MC’s claims. But it should also have served to arouse skepticism, even at this very early stage in the scandal. Under Canadian law, sexual assault is properly treated as a serious crime that can be punished with a life sentence. Would a university official such as Galloway confess to this crime over voicemail, while also asking permission to confess the same crime to his mentor, because he was worried about how the news might affect his reputation?

Few figures in the UBC community wanted to ask such questions at the time. Students and staff were horrified by the claims, and were understandably eager to express support for any woman who had suffered.

In retrospect, other questions should have been asked. No police report had been filed in regard to the alleged assault on MC. Nor had there been a police complaint in regard to unlawful confinement, or administering a noxious substance—both of which, as we shall see, could have followed from the claimed narrative.

Since 2015, MC has changed her story several times, including changing the date of the alleged assaults from 2012, when she was an MFA student in the UBC Creative Writing program, to 2011, when she wasn’t. She also originally alleged one assault and later claimed there had been three.

And, as for those other 19 victims of Galloway whom Rooney claimed she could bring forward, it turns out there is no evidence that they exist.

But it would be many months before Canadians would know any of this. And in the media, reports focused on Galloway’s suspension from UBC amid serious allegations. Rooney received sympathetic treatment from reporters, who presented her as a whistleblower with a tragic back story. “I had a rage-filled, alcoholic father who beat and raped our mother in front of us,” she said in an interview. “We spent several nights in women’s shelters, in fear of our lives.”

Chelsea Rooney (Twitter)

In this same interview, tagged to the launch of her 2014 book Pedal, Rooney candidly admitted that the act of writing had “forced two revelations on me: how narcissistic I am, and how much shame I carry because of my abuse…For me, narcissism describes a tendency to imagine myself at the centre. To imagine that the people in my life are doing things to me, and events are occurring because of me…It’s a terrible way to live. I still scan for threats, but more and more I catch myself doing it.”

It’s impossible to say whether this narcissistic tendency to “imagine herself at the center” of things is what caused Rooney to become MC’s most zealous champion, notwithstanding early signs that the underlying claims were unfounded. (Rooney did not respond to interview requests.) But largely as a result of her campaign on MC’s behalf, UBC officials would make a move that altered the lives of many people—all for the worse.

For what is believed to be the first time in its history, UBC would publicly announce a disciplinary action against a faculty member before any investigation had occurred.

“What I’ve always been mystified by,” says Andreas Schroeder, who taught in UBC’s Creative Writing program from 1994 to 2017, “was that faculty were assured [that] nineteen other women were coming forward with allegations—but it never happened.”

Schroeder remembers that during these events in November, 2015, no concrete information was presented to departmental staff. Instead, he says, the flow of information was conducted through gossip and second-hand claims that seemed to evaporate when you tried to track down the alleged source.

The UBC Creative Writing Department became a tense place. Schroeder said that there were rumors circulating that faculty emails were being monitored. A culture of fear had set in.

Things had been set in motion within the department on Sunday, November 15, when an emergency meeting of Creative Writing staff was held at the home of professor Linda Svendsen. Only select faculty were chosen to attend. One of the agenda items listed on the minutes was “Fifth Estate.” The Galloway voicemail was played to the room, and a decision was made to request that the dean suspend Galloway and remove him as department Chair.

Less than one business day had passed from the time that an unproven four-year-old allegation had been brought forward by Rooney on behalf of MC, yet Galloway’s fate was essentially decided in that room.

“I saw Steven called a rapist,” said a Creative Writing instructor who still works within the department, and spoke to me on condition that they remain anonymous. “I saw anyone who dared defend him called a rape apologist. I’ve watched the department go from a vibrant, welcoming place to a place full of cautiousness and fear and closed doors.”

* * *

At this point, it’s worth pausing to describe just how large Galloway loomed, as both a figure at UBC and in Canadian arts and letters more generally. He is one of the few first-tier novelists that his country has ever produced. His 2008 novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo, was an international bestseller, listed for numerous literary prizes. When he became acting chair of the UBC Creative Writing program in 2013, he made his impact felt immediately, taking steps to improve morale and increase public exposure for the school and its students.

As his first act as Chair, Galloway installed a large brass marine bell outside his office, for students to ring when they handed in their thesis, thereby completing their graduation. Prior to that, a student would submit his or her bound work to the departmental secretary, which felt like an anticlimax. Once Galloway’s thesis bell was installed, ringing it became a major event, with the secretary going down the halls knocking on doors to let everyone in the department know someone was about to have their moment. Students and faculty came out into the hall to clap and cheer for the graduating student, who stood under the bell and rang it.

Following the claims against Galloway, however, signs of his presence were removed from the department. The university sent the bell to Galloway’s house in a plain brown box.

Annabel Lyon (YouTube)

On the day after the meeting at Svendsen’s house, November 16, Galloway was informed of his suspension by email a few minutes before he was to speak at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. In a panic, he phoned Annabel Lyon, a novelist who taught in his department. He told her he’d been suspended pending an investigation, at which point, he recalls, she hung up on him. Hours later, she texted him, asking him to call her again. When he did, she put him on speakerphone with another professor, Nancy Lee, and the program administrator.

As in a novel by Kafka, Galloway had no idea of the specific allegations against him—although he guessed they were related in some way to MC. Galloway still felt remorse for his affair with MC, which had ended in early 2013. Although he was not department chair at the time of their intimate relationship, nor did he supervise MC’s thesis, Galloway knew that sex between teachers and students was frowned upon—even if it was not explicitly forbidden by UBC rules.

He told Lyon and Lee about the affair, and apologized profusely. In effect, he was delivering a version of the confession that he had delivered in his voicemail to MC. (At the time, Galloway didn’t know that Lyon and Lee had already heard the recording the day before.) By his account, the trio on the other end of the line then told him that they did not know anything about what was going on. At one point, Galloway remembers, Annabel reassured him that they had been friends for 15 years (which was true), and that everything would be okay (which was not).

The trio repeatedly asked him if he was suicidal. Galloway told them he was not, joking that he was way too much of a coward to kill himself. His focus was on catching a plane in a few hours and meeting his partner in Toronto. Someone from UBC would also contact MC to tell her to not sleep at home in case Galloway turned up in Toronto to kill her. While he was speaking to them, one of the three people on the other end of the call phoned the police in Ohio.

Two officers showed up at Galloway’s hotel room in Ohio. After interviewing him, one attending officer contacted Lyon, who (according to the police report) told him Galloway was suicidal, manipulative, and would tell them anything to get what he wanted. The responding officer removed Galloway from his hotel in handcuffs, seated him in the back of a squad car and transported him to the psychiatric ward of Miami Valley Hospital where he was strip searched and incarcerated on a 72 hour involuntary psychiatric remand known as a pink slip.

The next morning, while Galloway was still incarcerated, Martha Piper took to the podium at the Vancouver Board of Trade to announce UBC’s $1.6 billion in new funding.

Back on UBC campus, administrators and faculty were preparing to publicly announce Galloway’s suspension. Lyon and Svendsen convened an emergency meeting to tell all faculty and adjunct teachers that they were taking over as acting co-chairs, effective immediately.

They also informed faculty that Galloway had been suspended over “serious allegations,” and that precautions were being taken to protect students and provide them with counseling.

Whether intended or not, the word “protect” suggested that Galloway was associated with crimes so serious that his mere presence on campus might subject students to emotional trauma, or even physical danger.

The following day, UBC issued a press release using similarly ominous language. It announced that Galloway had been suspended, and that steps were being taken to protect the “safety, health and well-being of all members of our community.”

Dean of Arts Gage Averill then gave multiple media interviews. “We’re in a position right now where we’re dealing with allegations,” he said. “Nothing has been determined in regards to Professor Galloway, certainly not any finding of fault. So we want to protect his rights, understand the allegations, and respond to them.”

Alas, that train had already left the station.

Following the predictably emotional reaction within the Creative Writing department, Lyon spoke of her own sense of shock—striking the tone of a neighbor who tells news reporters about how the notorious criminal living next door seemed like a regular guy who said hello and stopped by for coffee. According to one UBC instructor who witnessed these events, Lyon told colleagues that the allegations were “upsetting for me, too. I mean, he used to change my kids’ diapers for god’s sake.” (Lee, Lyon, and Svendsen were invited, by email, to describe their own recollections of the events described in this article. But none provided any comment for attribution.)

Even by this time, none of the allegations against Galloway had been spelled out. All that was known—even internally—emerged from the series of lurid accusations from MC that were filtered through Rooney, and then again through an inner circle of faculty members who, conveniently, had just taken leadership of the department.

“I sat at dinner parties and heard people [who did not know Galloway] outlining the horrid rumors they’d heard like they were the truth,” said the above-quoted UBC instructor who asked to remain anonymous. “A friend, who’d been at [another] dinner party with someone from UBC’s own equity department, told [another] friend that ‘16 other women are coming forward.’ The strange leaks from people working at the university were particularly alarming and, as we later [learned], utterly false.”

This instructor reported to me that many faculty members were afraid to speak out. But a group of adjuncts who felt they had little to lose met with representatives of the dean’s office. When they asked why UBC released such an innuendo-heavy press release, one of the dean’s representatives reportedly replied: “We can’t be held responsible for what happens on social media.”

Martha Piper (YouTube)

This was a presumed reference to the Fifth Estate’s Ronna Syed, who’d produced School of Secrets, and broke the Galloway suspension announcement on Twitter. Within minutes of Syed’s tweet, several women who had appeared in School of Secrets were following up on Syed’s post by attacking Galloway and suggesting he was a rapist. The Fifth Estate announced they would be postponing the airing of School of Secrets to the following week, one might infer, with an eye toward updating it with material about Galloway. Piper released an official apology to the women victimized in the original scandal, and The Fifth Estatepublished it on their web page as the lead-in to the segment, offering UBC a small but precious PR victory amid the tumult. (In the end, the allegations against Galloway never made it onto the aired version of School of Secrets.)

Galloway remained silent during this period, following the recommendations of the UBC Faculty Association, whose President, Mark Mac Lean, released a statement criticizing UBC for going public with Galloway’s suspension and the unspecified allegations. There were some other people supporting Galloway, too. Random House Canada said it was “proud” to be Galloway’s publisher, and that it “looks forward” to publishing more. Fellow B.C. author Angie Abdou told a reporter that Galloway “is whip smart and absolutely hilarious,” as well as “kind and generous.”

But these were lonely voices, quickly targeted by a growing mob within the world of Canadian literature, which sought to create a united front against Galloway.

Rooney accused Mac Lean of silencing women. “They will now feel afraid to share information, which is exactly how silence becomes abusive and damaging,” she told CBC. “If we want to talk about the truth, if we want to talk about these types of events that happen every day within every kind of institution, then we have to actually talk about it.”

Her reaction to the Faculty Association statement would set the tone for the two-pronged media strategy adopted by Galloway’s accusers over the next two and a half years. First, Galloway’s guilt was to be assumed as a matter of fundamental truth. And second, demands for fair play and due process were to be interpreted as efforts to “silence” victims of sex abuse and emotionally injure Galloway’s supposed victims.

However spurious these claims proved to be as a matter of a law, they were successful in tarring Galloway and his defenders on social media. Even as of this writing, with the claims against Galloway now having been undermined on multiple fronts, Galloway’s most aggressive critics continue to apply the same tactics. (In Toronto’s Globe & Mail, for instance, writer Alicia Elliott—who helped lead the Twitter campaign both against Galloway and anyone seeking to ensure that he received due process—wrote a recent article entitled “We must value a woman’s pain above a man’s reputation.”)

Moreover, since no one was releasing information showing just how flimsy the case against Galloway really was, the media naturally went hard on the narrative of a supposed workplace sex tyrant leading one of Canada’s elite academic programs. As with the above-described relationship that developed between UBC and the CBC in late 2015, the bond between Galloway’s accusers and certain reporters would become close. Both had their own interests in presenting the story as a shocking case of abuse.

Rooney, in particular, continued to be presented as a hero of what later would be called the #MeToo movement. An op-ed about sexual assault policy that she published in the Vancouver Sun listed her as “one of several people who came forward to expose flaws of process by UBC in its treatment of students and faculty reporting misconduct by Steven Galloway.”

* * *

As the third week of November, 2015 unfolded, it became clear that almost all of Galloway’s closest friends and colleagues at UBC were now set to bolt and run. Not only did most refuse to support Galloway, but, taking their cue from Lyon, many became active members of the anti-Galloway mob.

It is hard to know how many of these people actually believed MC’s claims, and how many were simply trying to align themselves with the new power structure within the department that already seemed to be purging some of Galloway’s hires. But everyone saw where things were headed: To defend a heretic is to invite suspicion that you are also a heretic.

Things only got worse on Friday, November 20, when Associate Vice-President of UBC’s Office of Equity and Inclusion, said her team would take a “leadership role” on Galloway.

At this time, British Columbia’s provincial government was bringing in legislation requiring post-secondary institutions to implement standalone sexual assault policies. With the airing of the Fifth Estate episode imminent, university officials were under intense pressure to offer a demonstration of their commitment to addressing the issue.

Someone in power at UBC seems to have panicked. For nothing else can properly explain the disastrous series of decisions that then took place.

In a stunning breach of protocol and fairness, the Office of Equity and Inclusion conscripted Rooney—MC’s own spokesperson—to gather additional evidence of complaints against Galloway. UBC even provided Rooney—who was an ex-student with no official standing at the university— with a letter on Office of Equity and Inclusion letterhead, stating to Rooney’s recipients: “You are receiving this letter from me because the person delivering it to you thinks you may have a complaint against Professor Steven Galloway. As you are likely aware, the University is investigating a complaint against Professor Galloway.”

Beyond mandating a university-approved fishing expedition for accusations against Galloway—conducted by a complete amateur, with no apparent experience or expertise in the field of investigations, who already had announced her unwavering belief in MC’s accusations—the letter went further, actually encouraging recipients to take action on their own initiative: “Counseling Services can also provide information on options for filing a complaint and can facilitate the process should you choose to make a complaint.”

Readers may be excused for having to read that sentence twice before realizing that the university’s “counseling services” were effectively being offered as a conduit to prosecution.

The Office of Equity and Inclusion even included a down payment of flattery for anyone kind enough to assist with the campaign: “We understand how challenging this may be for you to come forward. We honour your strength and will do our utmost to support you in this process.” Indeed, the language seemed to go so far as to suggest that failing to come forward with some complaint or other might be interpreted as a sign of weakness, or even cowardice, in the battle for social justice.

In her 2013 book, Mobbed!: What to Do When They Really Are Out to Get You, Dr. Janice Harper writes, “Most work places are staffed by people who rarely have training in investigative methods. More often than not, they ask leading questions in an accusatory or overly sympathetic tone. They record notes in a manner [that] uses the information they obtain selectively. They do not ask follow-up questions to vague statements unless doing so would support their foregone conclusion.”

Based on what I have learned from those involved in Rooney’s campaign, it was a textbook example of the procedural bias Dr. Harper describes.

“If you’re receiving this email, it’s because you’ve either experienced or witnessed incidents that can speak directly to [Galloway’s] character,” Rooney wrote to individuals who, she believed, might have the kind of stories she wanted. “The range of abuses I’ve heard over the last week are multiple and sad…They have left me feeling terrible and worried…Right now, it is just one woman against an institution. Forgive my optimism, but I believe in this moment we have the power to disrupt traditional narratives.”

“I strongly encourage you to anonymously reach out to Laura Kane, a reporter with the BC bureau of the Canadian Press,” Rooney added. “I just spoke with her, and she [is] great. A very safe person to talk to. Warm and empathetic and well-versed in these issues… You can remain anonymous and your story will still have an impact on what happens in the Creative Writing department.”

Only after one interaction went badly did Rooney seem to realize that she had gone too far. “I am writing to apologize for asking you to contact the reporter,” she wrote in a November 24, 2015 email to one recipient. “It was poor judgment…I’m sorry. It was a bad day. I had heard so many stories at that point.”

In keeping with Rooney’s own self-assessment, she put herself at the center of the narrative—a victim who has been traumatized by her exposure to terrible truths, but who was now fighting back.

She also cast MC’s struggle in heroic terms, as “one woman against an institution”—which is ironic, given how isolated Galloway had become, and how both the institutional power structures of UBC and the disembodied mob power of Twitter had been stacked against him.

Rooney functioned as a one-woman team. She was officially regarded as a complainant by the university; she was voicing MC by proxy, including as a media point person; and she was serving the university as de facto investigator. As one UBC Creative Writing Faculty Member told me, “She took it [Steve’s destruction] up like a full time job.”

She’d promised to bring forward 19 assault complainants against Galloway. Instead she brought forward herself and seven of her friends. And even in these cases, the complaints were mostly frivolous—the sort of stories one might see on RateMyProfessors.com. All of the allegations made by these eight “Ancillary Complainants” (as they became known) were eventually dismissed. More importantly, so was the central rape allegation made by MC.

* * *

UBC, to its credit, eventually realized that some form of professional fact-finding was required. For this task, the school commissioned Madam Justice Mary Ellen Boyd—a retired female B.C. Supreme Court justice who actually knew how to interview people in a neutral way and follow up on inconsistencies in their stories. While Boyd would not be subjecting complainants to rigorous cross-examination in an adversarial manner, she would be conducting her questioning with an appropriate degree of skepticism. As of December 2015, Rooney’s free-for-all was over.

Of the eight Ancillary Complainants interviewed by Boyd, the one whose story seemed most damaging was a UBC creative writing student named Anna Maxymiw, who describes herself on social media as a rough-and-tumble “bro” journalist. (Only complainants who have publicly identified themselves as such are named in this article.)

Maxymiw told Boyd that she and Galloway were often physically playful with each other—sometimes aggressively so. She would regularly punch him in the arm, she said, and she once put a snowball down the back of his shirt. She did not dispute Galloway’s assertion that she had told him that he was “a shitty writer.”

At her most brazen, Maxymiw once slapped Galloway in the face. In response, Galloway joked that after she graduated, he would slap her back. Maxymiw told Madam Justice Boyd that she and Galloway “razzed” each other about the slap and that it became a running joke between them. She said she had been a “pig-headed loudmouth.”

In 2012, Galloway went out for drinks with a number of students, including Maxymiw, to celebrate their graduation. Galloway joked with Maxymiw around the table and then, in the presence of multiple witnesses, said, “it’s time.” He then slapped Maxymiw lightly, in the spirit of the long running joke, and without intent to harm. All of this is in Boyd’s report.

A few months after the slap, Maxymiw had published an article about “walking a carrot” and sent Galloway a direct message through Facebook that said: “i think slap therapy is actually less weird than taking a carrot for walkies. wouldn’t you agree? besides, you bought me a 3-dollar beer after, and that made me happy. (i’m a simple woman).” Prior to the airing of MC’s allegations in November, 2012, the slap was still very much a joke between them, and one that Maxymiw herself seemed to remember fondly.

In assessing whether any of this constituted misconduct, Boyd determined that:

Given what each of them actually experienced, knew or understood about each other in this situation—namely that the slap was the culmination of their own longstanding ‘joke’—it is difficult to conclude that the slap was an act of harassment or abuse. The matter was out of mind for the next 3½ years before [Mayxmiw] was reminded of what had occurred, and in light of the recent allegations regarding MC, reconsidered the matter and decided (in the context of allegations of choking and rape) that the slap was objectionable…Bizarre as the incident was, I am unable to find that it amounts to a single incident of personal harassment.

Some have seized on the fact that Galloway would sometimes go out drinking with students—an informal ritual at the local Legion Hall, on Thursday evenings. Boyd heard from many students about this, but eventually concluded as follows:

I entirely dismiss the general complaints that [Galloway] intentionally created a culture where students felt pressure to participate in drinking sessions, whether on or off campus, that he plied students with alcohol or otherwise went about deliberately creating a sexualized environment. I also dismiss the complaints that the Respondent expected students to participate in drinking sessions and befriend him, understanding that they could not otherwise enjoy the benefits of a system of favouritism.

Erin Flegg, a former UBC student whose Ancillary Complaint Boyd dismissed because it did not contain even a prima facie allegation of improper behavior, told Boyd that “I acknowledge that [Galloway] never behaved in a disrespectful manner toward me,” and “I did not feel either threatened, or unsafe, or vulnerable vis-à-vis Galloway.” (She did, however, object to Galloway hiring Hal Wake, artistic director of the Vancouver Writers Festival, to teach a class on conducting literary readings and interviews. She felt her friend should have been hired for the job instead.)

Ancillary Complainant Krissy Darch came forward with a complaint that Galloway had made her feel ill at ease vicariously. In a writing workshop, Darch explained, Chelsea Rooney was feeling uncomfortable receiving criticism about her work, so Galloway suggested that, as a coping mechanism, she pretend she was a block of butter and that a puppy was licking her. This was a direct reference to a scene from a story that Rooney herself had just submitted. But Darch testified that she was nevertheless “grossed out,” since she knew Chelsea was a survivor of sexual abuse.

Darch also told Boyd that when she met with Galloway about her thesis, she asked him to close the door, which he did. As he did so, he said, according to her recollection, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to assault you.”

Boyd considered the context in which this comment was made: A week before, a man who was angry that he didn’t get into the UBC MFA program had stormed into Galloway’s office, slammed the door behind him, and threatened to burn the building down with Galloway in it. Police were called. Darch had stood in the hallway listening to the incident unfold.

(Darch’s thesis was in part about human trafficking. She further complained that Galloway had asked her how she knew so much about the subject, which upset her.)

A male Ancillary Complainant, whose book Galloway blurbed, made two claims that Boyd also ruled could not even be categorized as complaints. The complainant reported that at some indeterminate time in the past, Galloway had participated in a joke about breasts made by an unnamed woman about a man she had been seeing. He also stated he’d heard about the “slap” incident, though did not witness it. Boyd wrote: “He makes no suggestion that, at the time, [Galloway’s] actions caused a ‘hostile or intimidating environment.'”

What this Ancillary Complainant did suggest, however, was that he had been motivated by his support for the #believewomen movement to come forward. It was a telling admission, though perhaps not for the reason the complainant imagined.

* * *

At this point, let me pause to offer my own #believewomen caveat: It’s not crazy to think that a successful, respectable-seeming novelist who leads an academic department might be a rapist. We hear of stories like this in many industries.

In general, I do give women accusing men of rape the benefit of the doubt, since statistics show that most accusations of this type are truthful, and the stigma attached to rape serves to discourage false accusations. When I heard the vague allegations against Galloway, I assumed—as many people did—that he really had committed some form of horrendous indiscretion, perhaps even a crime. And I only began to suspect otherwise after I was attacked on social media by the complainants simply for seeking basic facts about these alleged acts.

When it became clear that Boyd’s investigation wasn’t going to rubber-stamp the case against Galloway, his critics and accusers—who by now had become a well organized force on social media—simply bypassed official channels, and continued to prosecute Galloway on Twitter and Facebook. They also collectively attacked anyone who refused to accept the black-and-white narrative of MC as truth-telling sexual abuse survivor, and Galloway as sadistic villain. Even Boyd was accused of colluding with UBC to uphold the power structures of patriarchy.

What seems closer to the truth is that the ancillary complainants, having been prepared, by Rooney, to be treated as heroes, weren’t ready for even a baseline level of scrutiny from a competent and independent legal mind.

Rooney herself was so shaken by Boyd’s questioning that she wrote to Dean Averill to ask that UBC hire a sexual assault expert to consult with Boyd. “Her line of questioning left me very concerned about the direction of her investigation,” Rooney wrote. On Twitter, Rooney rebuked one of her doubters with the admonition, “Oh, you’re an ‘I believe the [Boyd] report’ kinda person. Okay. Let me guess, you also think victims of sexual assault should go to police?”

The implication here is that Boyd acted as a stand-in for how our legal system fails women when it comes to sexual abuse. And, to be fair to Rooney, the phenomenon she describes can be very real. As Globe & Mail reporter Robyn Doolittle authoritatively showed in her 2017 series, Unfounded, Canadian police officers dismiss about 20 percent sexual-assault claims as baseless.

But Boyd makes for a strange target. She is one of the most accomplished female jurists in B.C. history. And in cases where judges must be educated on the intersection of law and sex, Boyd would seem more likely to give lessons than receive them. In one 2001 B.C. Supreme Court case, Dr. Dutton v. BC Human Rights Tribunal et al., Boyd upheld a tribunal’s findings that a psychology professor at UBC had created a sexualized environment and discriminated against a student on the basis of sexual harassment. Boyd also presided over the trial of Barry Thomas Niedermier, who was convicted of viciously assaulting society’s most vulnerable and oft-ignored women, drug addicted sex workers. (Niedermier’s brutality was so severe that police once suspected him of murders now known to have been committed by infamous serial killer Robert Pickton.) Niedermier’s victims deserved justice and they found it in Madam Justice Boyd’s court.

In her report, Boyd was scathing of Rooney:

I have spent some time reviewing AC5’s [Rooney’s] specific complaints, since she is the one complainant who has most vigorously participated in this investigation, conferring with MC, speaking to [Creative Writing] program faculty prior to the November 15 meeting [at the home of Linda Svendson], and then spearheading the gathering of evidence…She was and is clearly defensive about her role in this matter.

After she provided her statement of evidence at my initial interview, I arranged to meet her a second time to ask further questions largely related to her dealings with MC and her subsequent identification of and contact with the Ancillary Complainants. When her Supplementary Statement of evidence was returned to her for editing, she refused to either confirm it or edit it, and instead returned a memorandum in which she disavowed her earlier recollections.

Suffice it to say that I found AC5 [Rooney] a biased witness, who has perceived every minor incident here through her own tainted lens. I am unable to place much, if any, weight on her evidence.

Rooney has criticized both the content of Boyd’s report, and the procedures surrounding its creation. But as already noted, she declined my request for further comment. MC did not respond to a similar solicitation.

* * *

One odd aspect of the way that the Galloway story has been treated by journalists is that there has been much reporting about the slaps and slights that are the subject of the Ancillary Complaints, but little scrutiny of the actual merits of MC’s main rape allegation.

For over two and a half years, Galloway has been vilified, threatened, and driven to the edge of both bankruptcy and suicide. Yet scan through the tens of thousands of social media posts condemning Galloway, and you will have trouble finding anything that sets out, even in skeletal form, the explosive claims that started this entire debacle.

In fact, it took me over a year of research, including interviews with former students and faculty, before I finally heard the claims spelled out in a coherent fashion.

MC claimed that she never had an affair with Galloway; that he had tried to rape her on numerous occasions—including on his boat; and that he finally succeeded in raping her after he drugged her in his office, on a weekday, during normal business hours. MC claimed this happened right before a public reading at UBC by the writer Miriam Toews.

As in many cases that fall apart, it is the small details that are telling. The day of the Toews reading, Boyd noted, made for an improbable timeline—since Galloway had told multiple students by email to come by his office before the reading to pick up reference letters they’d requested from him. Galloway and MC also attended the Toews reading with nearly the entire department in attendance, which—even in light of all that we know about the different ways that people respond to sexual trauma—was not consistent with someone who had been drugged unconscious and then raped shortly before arriving.

MC is five years Galloway’s senior, and had arrived at UBC with a master’s degree from another institution and two previous tenure-track positions at U.S. universities. (She continues to teach at one of these universities today.) She cannot credibly be cast as a starry-eyed ingénue beguiled by Galloway’s reputation. In fact, at the time of their affair, Galloway held no tenure, or any administrative role in the Creating Writing department, but rather was a mere sessional instructor working on a year-to-year contract.

When Galloway and MC called their affair off, they were both married. Both deleted the messages they had sent to one another to avoid having their affair discovered. Fortunately for Galloway, these messages were subsequently retrieved from the cloud. These include over 250 pages of messages between them proving an affair, the existence of which MC had denied to Boyd. They also serve to cast doubt on her allegations of assault on Galloway’s boat.

To cite just one example: MC texted Galloway in June, 2012, over a year after the date on which, she later alleged, he assaulted her at sea: “Can I write on your boat for a few hours this afternoon. Around 3:00. It’s not safe to be at my house.” Not only was MC not afraid of Galloway, she apparently considered his boat a refuge from some (unspecified) domestic threat. Galloway’s detractors would explain this as a coping mechanism, by which an abused woman might seek to make peace with her tormentor. But given the totality of all the inconsistences in MC’s story, that does not seem plausible—especially since a small boat seems one of the most unsafe places imaginable for a woman to be with a man who supposedly had assaulted her previously.

The messages also include another sexual assault allegation that MC reported to Galloway—relating to an alleged incident involving another man that, according to her narrative, took place after the time when Galloway supposedly drugged, confined, and raped her in his office.

This was 2013, after their affair had ended. UBC was seeking to fill two tenure-track positions. A writer who was a favourite to get one of the spots had completed his interview, at which point MC joined him at a hotel bar for an evening of drinks that lasted until they shut the bar down. MC alleges this writer then sexually assaulted her when she visited him again the next morning. The writer in question vehemently denies the allegation.

MC texted Galloway to report the alleged assault. She asked him not to expose the writer publicly, but to make sure he didn’t get the job for which he applied. Galloway went straight to the then-department chair to disclose what happened. The chair decided to include the Graduate Advisor, and it was decided that the evaluations of the applicant would be adjusted. The candidate did not get the job, and instead the position was given to the aforementioned Nancy Lee, who at the time held a year-to-year position, and who is now a tenure-track faulty member and a staunch supporter of the complainants. (MC was Lee’s teaching assistant at the time.)

It’s important to keep in mind that the alleged hotel bar incident involving MC supposedly happened two years after the claimed drugging and raping in Galloway’s office, during business hours, at a time when students had been invited to drop in, shortly before a speech they both attended, after MC supposedly awoke from what she said was an unconscious state.

This was evidence that Boyd rightly considered—for it raises the question: Would a rape victim report a subsequent sexual assault by a third party to a man who had himself drugged and raped her in his office? Why, one is made to wonder, would she not report it the department chair, who was also the program equity officer and her thesis advisor, and to whom she eventually reported her allegation against Galloway? Or to the dean? Or to the police? Or, indeed, to anyone except the man who’d supposedly raped her?

In a November, 2016 exchange, famed Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood—who has stood by her original call for UBC to respect Galloway’s right to due process—tweeted that “no one can be asked to believe or not believe a package of unknown things.” To which Rooney replied, “I…strongly disagree. We can be asked to believe a person who reports sexual assault. And we can believe her. And we do.”

At the time, this seemed like a she-said/she-said argument about an accusation, the truth of which could never be authoritatively established or denied. Now, it looks like something very different: a debate between a writer who follows the evidence, and another who makes ignoring it a point of principle.

* * *

On April 20, 2016, Martha Piper held an impromptu meeting with the B.C. bureau of The Globe and Mail, in which she stated that she was considering banning romantic relationships between UBC faculty and students: “In a power situation where somebody has power over your career, your advancement, your grades, you may say you consent because of the power situation.”

By yet another amazing coincidence, just five days later, on April 25, 2016, Madam Justice Boyd officially delivered her final report to Dean Gage Averill. Boyd found that all of the sexual assault allegations in 2011 against Galloway were not proven, based on a balance-of-probabilities standard; and that “for the next two years, from the Spring of 2011 until the Spring of 2013, the parties were involved in an extramarital affair, in which there is no allegation of harassment or assault.”

Amazingly, the only thing Galloway had done wrong—have a consensual affair with MC—was the one important thing that MC herself had tried to deny.

Sierra Skye Gemma (Twitter)

But this was not the result the mob wanted. And so even after Boyd submitted her report, UBC would once again look to one of the complainants to find more dirt on Galloway—this time tapping AC4, Sierra Skye Gemma, to investigate Galloway’s financial dealings during his time as department head. (On her CV, Gemma is listed as serving as “Financial Processing Specialist, UBC Department of Creative Writing, 2014-2016.”)

The Globe and Mail later interviewed Gemma, who stated that she was asked to review requisitions by Galloway, and that “I believe that UBC was very thoroughly investigating all his actions as chair of the program.”

Andreas Schroeder saw it differently: “I got the impression that when [Boyd] exonerated Steve, the dean and the program co-chairs realized they’d lost their justification for firing him, but meanwhile they’d gotten everyone so cranked up with their reckless accusations that now everyone expected a firing—so then they started digging into his administrative work, to see if they could cook up some more charges.”

But as things turned out, the actual content of the Boyd report didn’t really percolate into much of the media coverage—because the report was never officially released, and the propaganda campaign against Galloway on social media and on campus had already served to destroy his reputation.

On June 22, 2016, UBC announced that they were firing Galloway under the conveniently vague rationale of “breach of trust.” This result was celebrated on social media by the complainants and their many allies, and used as evidence to support their claims that Galloway was a violent sexual predator. Even though Boyd hadn’t backed up MC, or substantiated any of the ancillary accusations, and even though Gemma failed to turn up any financial wrongdoing, it still was possible to ride the public narrative that Galloway was a toxic male who misused his power to have sex with at least one woman. It wasn’t true. For hash-tag purposes, however, it was sufficiently truthy.

But of course, people don’t live in social media. They live in the real world of human beings. And in that real world, Galloway would slip into a suicidal depression that would require his friends and family to keep him on round-the-clock watch. Anyone who has spent time with the man over the last two-and-a-half years can see not only the mental toll this has taken on him, but also the physical toll. And he would continue slogging through an arbitration process, the ground rules of which required that he say nothing—even as thousands of people told lies about him.

* * *

Following Galloway’s bout with suicidal depression, I was asked to publish a letter in defense of his right to due process. I originally declined to do this, but changed my mind in direct response to over-the-top comments by writer Jane Eaton Hamilton, who wrote on Facebook, “I don’t know what the allegations here are specifically, but even actions that fall short of rape (harassment, unsafe environments etc) have long-term impacts on their victims and a true financial cost. If there are multiple reports, even if unprovable in court, or ‘unsubstantiated,’ you can bet there were multiple ‘inappropriate actions’ or whatever the allegations are. Smoke really does mean fire.” This wasn’t just about Galloway, I decided. In a world where suspicion always indicates guilt, due process is dead.

The public letter was published on November 15, 2016, two days from the anniversary of Galloway’s suspension and incarceration in Ohio. I did not write the letter, but I did publish it and provide its name, “UBC Accountable.” Over 90 Canadian writers would sign it, though many would end up removing their names after being attacked publicly as “rape apologists.”

The first person to respond to the letter was UBC President Santa Ono, who messaged me via Twitter, about half an hour after the site went live. This was before any public criticism had been leveled at me or the letter, in what would later become a sort of civil war that separated the Canadian literary community into the modern equivalent of pro- and anti-Dreyfus factions.

At this point, I was still hopeful that UBC would learn from its mistakes, and belatedly take a leadership role in ensuring due process for Galloway. I wrote back to the new UBC President: “I can’t imagine this being a fair thing to inherit at all. Part of the great tragedy is that it has hurt Steven, his family, the complainants, the Creative Writing Department, the writing community, the faculty and the students.”

He told me in return that he hoped everyone realized that all of this happened long before he arrived at UBC—a comment that I hoped signaled his desire to treat Galloway, and others, fairly. As it turns out, I was wrong.

When I asked UBC for comment from Piper about any role she may have had in abetting Galloway’s railroading, I was provided with a statement from Philip Steenkamp, Vice-President of External Relations, on behalf of the university. It was a boilerplate response, essentially identical to one that the university released this month, following the announcement that it had reached a financial settlement with Galloway, described below, over his claims for reputational damage and infringement of privacy.

Ironically, UBC’s communications department sent me Steenkamp’s statement just hours after his own resignation was announced. As UBC’s student newspaper reports: “Steenkamp is the fifth member of UBC’s administration to leave in the past year and the third to do so in the past two months.”

* * *

This is not just a story about one novelist whose reputation was destroyed—at least, temporarily—by allegations that did not stand up to fair and unbiased examination. It is also a cautionary tale that shows why due process and the presumption of innocence are pillars of any just society.

That is especially true when someone’s guilt becomes the subject of a cult-like obsession. As a Vancouver-based writer, I can attest that it now has become difficult to convince Galloway’s detractors to examine any of the actual evidence. It feels like trying to convince a devout Christian evangelist to imagine a world in which there is no such thing as the devil.

Indeed, the language used to describe Galloway truly does evoke demonic themes, as if the man were a font of almost supernatural malignancy. In 2017, for instance, Dalhousie English Department professor Erin Wunker presented an academic paper at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, in which she reportedly said: “We will never know the scope of Galloway’s violence, and can never fully account for it.”

But what kind of devil gets paid by his former employer for destroying his image? This month, it was announced that UBC has paid Galloway $167,000 for violating his privacy rights and damaging his reputation—a result highly inconsistent with the idea that he is guilty of anything resembling the “serious allegations” announced in November, 2015.

If UBC were a normal place, and the allegations against Galloway were treated in a normal way, one would think that this development would help lead some of Galloway’s detractors to rethink their views. Instead, they have again taken to social media to call him a rapist, mock his suicidal depression, and even threaten him with violence. This includes writer Susan MacRae, who wrote on Twitter that “this past week two actually talented and more successful individuals [Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade] did commit suicide without alerting the media first—they were even more successful at suicide than Steven Galloway.”

As has already been noted on this site, the vicious prosecution of the Galloway hate cult has swallowed up other victims. After the UBC Accountable letter was published, Sierra Skye Gemma took to Twitter to defend herself by means of attacking Margaret Atwood, one of the few novelists in Canada who is even more accomplished than Galloway. In a 74-tweet rant, Gemma contextualizes her attacks with graphic accounts of sex abuse she reports as having endured during childhood.

In October, 2017, Gemma shared a post on her Facebook wall that solicited anonymous allegations against men in Canadian publishing on behalf of a Buzzfeed reporter. Rooney’s husband Taylor Brown-Evans, who is an adjunct instructor in UBC’s Creative Writing Department (hired by Galloway), also shared this post.

Echoing statements made during the attacks on Galloway, the tone suggests that failure to produce accusations might be seen as tantamount to cowardice in the war against sexual abuse: “If you would like to anonymously name your abuser/harasser (in the Canadian publishing industry), you can share this information With me and I will pass it on, anonymously, to another woman who is collecting abusers’ names to pass them on to Buzzfeed’s new anonymous tip line…This is what *I* am doing to support survivors. What are *you* going to do to support survivors?”

A few months later, a small Canadian publisher, Coach House Books, announced they were cancelling their poetry program.

In an article for Buzzfeed, Scaachi Koul reported details of the decision by Coach House’s Alana Wilcox to fire poetry editor Jeramy Dodds, based on anonymous allegations emerging from an email account listed as representing a group called Canlit Janitors. The allegations were, and remain, completely unproven. And as Dodds wrote in an impassioned blog post, he never even had a chance to understand them, let alone properly respond to them, before his reputation and livelihood were destroyed at a stroke. (Online trolls didn’t confine their attacks to Dodds, but also targeted his fiancée, calling her “fat,” and a “fake feminist.”)

Dodds’s pleas for fair treatment fell on deaf ears. The railroading of Galloway had shown the Canadian literary world that sentencing comes first, the trial comes later (if at all); and that anyone who raises his or her voice on behalf of the presumption of innocence does so at their own peril.

As for Galloway, he effectively became a blank slate in November, 2015. It’s as if his soul were dipped in bleach, so that thousands of writers, academics, and social-justice activists could then project their worst fears, vices, sins, frustrations, jealousies, and academic theories onto him.

He became a stand-in for rape, for ‘toxic masculinity,’ and even for the patriarchy itself. On the other hand, MC became a sort of #MeToo Joan of Arc to people who still don’t know her real name, nor what she had accused Galloway of doing, nor the reasons why Boyd concluded that those events had never happened. As one of MC’s online supporters wrote on Twitter: “MC is my hero. I do not know her, but some day I would like to shake her hand. She did the incredibly difficult thing of coming forward.”

* * *

Margaret Atwood

Earlier this year, Atwood summed up her thoughts on the Galloway affair with an essay entitled “Am I A Bad Feminist?”

“I believe that in order to have civil and human rights for women there have to be civil and human rights, period, including the right to fundamental justice, just as for women to have the vote, there has to be a vote,” she wrote. In regard to the specifics of Galloway’s case, she added, “a fair-minded person would now withhold judgment as to guilt until the report and the evidence are available for us to see. We are grownups: We can make up our own minds, one way or the other.”

Atwood wrote that back in January, before Galloway was awarded his $167,000, and before many of the most important details of the Boyd report had leaked out. Objective observers now have the tools they need to act like “grownups” and make up their minds.

Boyd doesn’t use the term “liar” to describe MC. And, indeed, it is still possible to imagine that, in her own mind, MC actually does still believe her claims to be true. But even according to the loose balance-of-probabilities test applied by Boyd (far less stringent than the beyond-reasonable-doubt standard employed in criminal proceedings), MC’s story didn’t add up. By any fair measure, Steven Galloway must be regarded as innocent, and the most important inquiry now isn’t into his behavior, but that of a university that allowed his reputation to be trashed by a mob.

Which brings us back to Madam Justice Smith, who wrote in her report about Berdahl’s academic freedom, that “sometimes several relatively small mistakes can lead to a failure of the larger system.” I believe the same general principle applies to UBC’s treatment of Galloway. There was no conspiracy against the man—just a series of bad, hurried, self-serving decisions aimed at protecting the university from bad press in the short-term, while causing it to thoroughly disgrace itself in the long run.

* * *

Andreas Schroeder was one of the most beloved instructors in UBC’s Creative Writing program for a quarter century. He helped found the League of Canadian Poets and The Writers Union of Canada where he was a primary force behind Canada establishing Public Lending Rights, through which about 17,000 Canadian authors receive $10 million a year—about $300 million in the pockets of Canadian writers since its inception.

Andreas Schroeder

There’s arguably no one in Canada who has done more for Canadian writers than Andreas Schroeder. But when you come down on the wrong side of an inquisition, your legacy means nothing. All that matters is your views on heretics.

“For 25 years I was considered a member of the tenured faculty, but all of a sudden I was excised,” Schroeder said.

In his final semester of teaching, Schroeder was the subject of a complaint. In one of several hit pieces on Galloway, UBC’s student newspaper would describe an interview with a student, identified only as Erin, who wrote: “Having to be in that class with [Schroeder] a day or two days after I had found out that he had signed that letter [seeking due process for Galloway] was a tough class…It was just this elephant in the room that wasn’t being addressed—like everyone just looked pretty visibly upset. Especially the women and queer students.”

As an educator, Galloway’s legacy was to instill pride and enthusiasm in hundreds of students who passed through the UBC Creative Writing program. The legacy of Galloway’s inquisitors, on the other hand, is to convince students that due process, a concept that sits at the foundation of any democratic system of government, is a sinister force that wounds the soul and harms women.

I have known and admired Schroeder since I completed a single year in UBC’s MFA program in 2001. I knew Galloway as I knew other people in the literary community whom I would see at large events from time to time, but we were never close. The first time I would have talked to Galloway one-on-one was nearly two years ago, in 2016, when a friend suggested I begin trying to piece together what UBC had done to him. I had no preconceptions. If anything, my credentials as a member of the leftist literati would have pushed me into the accusers’ camp. It was the facts that persuaded me, not the man or his literary reputation.

UBC invited me to Schroeder’s retirement party, which was held on campus. Co-chairs Lyon and Svendsen didn’t show up, and, as if in a scene from Curb Your Enthusiasm, UBC put the wrong name (Rhea, the name of another retiring faculty member) on Schroeder’s retirement cake. But he was determined to have a good time anyway.

I had the honour of bringing Schroeder a retirement gift. It was a present from Steven Galloway—the large brass marine bell that he had installed in the hall of the creative writing department as his first act as Chair.

Galloway had planned to keep the bell until after his arbitration, at which time he intended to throw it in the Pacific Ocean. But when he heard about Schroeder’s retirement party, he changed his mind.

UBC was once Galloway’s family. As much as they would like to now forget he ever darkened their halls, he was, in fact, widely seen as a rising star—a local Vancouver boy who had come up through their undergrad program to become an international bestselling author.

In 2000, The Vancouver Sun ran a profile piece on up-and-coming writers called “The 10 Most Vaunted.” Nine of the ten writers featured were UBC grads, including Galloway, who described himself as the university’s “least likely to succeed.” He described a “painfully normal” childhood growing up in Kamloops, BC where he worked at MacDonald’s, never did “anything interesting, ever,” and was a total “wuss.” To round out the interview Galloway described himself as “an awful writer, just hideous.” Seventeen years later, his lit-nerd profile now stands out as the strongest of the 10 featured writers.

After the article ran, Galloway’s publisher insisted he enroll himself in media training. But Galloway knew what he was doing, and was already on his way to turning compulsive self-deprecation into part of his brand. But while he loved being personally lampooned for his awkwardness, he became a tireless defender of UBC Creative Writing and would rise against any public criticism of the department.

What Annabel Lyon said about Galloway changing her child’s diapers was true. For many years, he had Christmas dinner with fellow faculty member Nancy Lee and her extended family. Once, on Father’s Day, when Galloway’s mentor Keith Maillard was missing his own children, who happened to be out of town, Galloway took him to dinner. On the Acknowledgments page of her 2014 novel Pedal, Chelsea Rooney thanks “Steven Galloway, who encouraged me to commit to writing at a very important time in my life.” (Galloway had actively mentored Rooney, and had helped her shop the book to publishers. He even blurbedPedal, which was published just a year before the accusations against him were aired in late 2015: “Pedal is a brave and captivating book, written with an unflinching eye and a deep understanding of the torment that is the human condition. Chelsea Rooney is a major talent.”)

The thesis bell symbolized how Galloway felt about his department and its students—before the institution effectively destroyed him because of allegations that ultimately didn’t withstand serious scrutiny. I brought the bell back to the UBC campus in the same brown box the University had used to rid themselves of the object.

Any of the many dozens of former Creative Writing students at UBC who rang it would still recognize that bell instantly if they saw it. Only one small detail has changed since the days when it hung outside Galloway’s office—a text engraving that Galloway added in tribute to the person who had fought in vain to have it put back up: Andreas Schroeder, UBC 1993-2017, Never Stop Ringing The Bell.

Brad Cran is an award-winning writer who served as the Poet Laureate for the City of Vancouver from 2009 to 2011. The feminist organization Canadian Women In The Literary Arts, which he helped to found in 2012, once called him “A National Treasure.” Read selections of his writing at bradcran.com. Follow him on Twitter @bradcran

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“In general, I do give women accusing men of rape the benefit of the doubt, since statistics show that most accusations of this type are truthful, and the stigma attached to rape serves to discourage false accusations. When I heard the vague allegations against Galloway, I assumed—as many people did—that he really had committed some form of horrendous indiscretion, perhaps even a crime. And I only began to suspect otherwise after I was attacked on social media by the complainants simply for seeking basic facts about these alleged acts.”

Bad heuristic bro. “Guilty until people is mean to me on Twitter?” is how you sort these things out? Social media poopfests are your basis for divining validity of accusations? Nice piece overall, but fail with the virtue signaling.

I give everyone the benefit of the doubt, unless I was personally involved. I won’t believe the allegations against Weinstein unless he confesses or is found guilty in a court of law. If he is guilty, then he deserves everything he gets. Innocent until proven guilty is a key tenet of a fair society, and it needs to be defended… by everyone, for everyone.

There are serious downsides to these fake rape claims. First, they drive a further wedge between male and female relations, something we don’t need. Second, they serve to undermine legitimate allegations.

Weinstein Is betrayed by his directorial looks… bush-bearded well-built man with glass of whisky in hand is indefensible….but really tough to survive such allegations when given credence by incompetent managers

Meh, you can unequivocally support due process and the presumption of innocence while still being honest about your gut reaction to these things.

My first reaction was indeed to think he must have done something criminal in nature. That’s not a statement against due process. It’s an acknowledgment of how strong the taint of guilt is and why we must all resist the temptation to condemn without facts and a just process even if we are tempted to do otherwise.

From the evidence I have seen his sin (not a crime except in the Biblical sense) was to have an affair with a married woman while being married himself.

Until true justice is served (very cold) to the false witnesses who have destroyed Galloway their ability to lie, smear, and ruin lives based on anonymous accusations will not only continue unabated but grow exponentially. IMO All involved from the head on down should lose their jobs and pensions and be permanently banned from academia. And also truly apologize to the victim. Otherwise the modern-day Witch Trials will continue to steamroll on.

I wholeheartedly agree. Until the witches of the witch-hunt receive some justice – ie lose their jobs, reputation, are fined – this type of injustice will continue.Some of the people in this story are truly evil.

Exactly, I think most people understand that, it’s somewhat unfortunate that that’s the top comment – this isn’t Reddit. But at this point one can’t help but notice that false accusations that ARE leveraged seem to be made with utter alacrity, as cases like this illustrate, while truthful accusations seem to more often be made relatively hesitantly and after much hand-wringing. As if liars worry less about whether they’ll be believed (the risk is negligible, it’s hard to find any meaningful consequences to being discredited). And let me distinguish knowingly false accusations from those born of legitimate confusion.

To follow up on a recent piece about “rape culture”, there certainly seems to be a culture of false accusations. Complete with models, artefacts, rhetoric, and training. What Galloway suffered isn’t the same thing as rape, of course, but when a man like him gets $167,000 compensation and a rape victim gets $1,000,000,000 (easily searchable, Google will auto-fill it for you), it seems clear to me on which side of the issue our society errs. Numbers like that speak louder than the anecdotal singularity of the examples.

It seems to me that Cran is saying not that he changed his mind when people were mean to him on Twitter – he’s been on it awhile, and meanness is not exactly unusual there – but that it’s a sign when everyone is outraged but no-one can supply well-grounded facts.

This is a pretty standard course of events in moral panics: people start off believing the accusations because they believe other people must know more than they do, only to then find out that other people don’t know much at all.

By the way, I don’t presume that this is such a case. I’m simply observing that if it is, the evolution of Cran’s scepticism would be pretty normal.

“Guilty until people is mean to me on Twitter?” is how you sort these things out?”
Bad critical thinking skills bro.
Read for content. As you quoted: “attacked on social media by the complainants simply for seeking basic facts.”
In other words, complainants seemed credible until they damaged their own credibility.
See, wasn’t that easy?

“In general, I do give women accusing men of rape the benefit of the doubt, since statistics show that most accusations of this type are truthful,”

Even in a piece that makes an attempt to defend Galloway, you still have to throw in this disclaimer. That’s how powerful the “rape apologist” accusers have become. “Don’t worry everyone, I still believe all men accused of rape are guilty at first glance! Don’t dox me!”

You know what? I DON’T give rape accusers the benefit of the doubt. I expect them to have to prove their accusation, just like everyone else accusing someone of a heinous crime. That’s not “rape culture” – it’s the cornerstone of all the fairest and most successful legal systems in the world.

Excellent article about a sad and appalling story. From the witchhunts to the ‘cultural revolution’, from mccarthyism to… this: Why do our societies keep falling for this kind of hysteria? stupidity? fear?

I don’t think he wrote or meant “Guilty until people is mean to me on Twitter,” Pizza Pete. The way I read it (and what I found out for myself, as a woman wading into the debate and getting attacked for asking the same thing, gently) was that many/most commentators were literally refusing to consider any other possibility than Galloway’s guilt, and were also refusing to even attempt to learn about any facts, context or evidence. Like him, I didn’t assume Galloway was innocent just became social media was being mean; but rather, I hesitated to join the mob in assuming he was probably guilty—because the mob was being wilfully mean AND stupid. (and AFAIK continues to be so.)

It makes sense when you consider it’s actually collective punishment. Guilt or innocence does not matter – he is a ciswhite hetmale and that is enough to determine he doesn’t deserve a defense. He might not have done anything – but that doesn’t matter. He’s part of a vile group that needs to be removed from society for the good of society.

Well, HarlandO, to be sure, ciswhite hetmales have might have invented “due process”, and pretty good at applying it to fellow ciswhite hetmales, but throughout history they’ve been damn lousy at applying it to minorities, gays, women, the underprivileged… that’s why we’re now in danger of the pendulum of injustice swinging to the other extreme.

Yes HarlandO, I agree with pretty much of your statement, but your closing comment rang a bit out of tune…seemed to suggest that ciswhite hetmales invented a rational justice system (a.k.a. “due process”) and, one could infer, they should get brownie points for that…but *true* and inclusive “due process” did not really arise until the ruling class (a.k.a. ciswhite hetmales) were challenged by civil rights advocates, protestors, judicial challengers, uprisers (a.k.a. non-ciswhite non-het non-males). Let’s try to get the pendulum in balance, not swing it waayyyy back to the unjust position it used to be in.

I’m sorry to hear that, gwallan. I don’t doubt that your experience might not have been taken as seriously or elicited as much sympathy because a woman did it, but it was and is illegal to molest a minor, whether it by by a man or a woman. My comment on “due process” was meant more broadly, and more in response to HarlandO’s comment that ciswhite hetmales “invented” due process. I hope you are able to access some services now.

Perhaps, but Diana Davison uses too much bile and gratuitous name-calling in her commentary to be taken seriously. Her bile clouds the relevant facts in her tirades, and does not help her win over people.

This is not my circle of acquaintance of even interest, but there is a very long list of people who any sane person would never want to have anything to do with them. And should never be anywhere near a position where their decisions affect anyone else.

There is nothing to say except a very large number of people showed themselves to be quite vile. There is no nice way of saying it. It is a disgrace and they should be ashamed of themselves.

Perhaps presenting the truth is more important to Diana Davison than “winning over people” and, by the way, your use of the phrase “the ruling class (a.k.a. ciswhite hetmales)” marks you out as a bit of a twat.

Burlats, I was referring to the past, when women and minority races did not have the right to vote in Canada, and homosexuality was in the criminal code. You might not be aware of those facts, which marks you out as a bit of a moron, as well as a bit of an asshole. (Since we’ve collectively decided on this thread that name-calling is fine.)

I agree that Davison is too partisan, but to be quite honest I would have a hard time not spewing bile after reading this, too.

The man was thrown into a psych ward for three days, in handcuffs, while in a foreign country, over an accusation made by a person he had known for 15 years, who knew the accusation to be fraudulent. That’s one of the most sadistically evil things I have ever heard

At this point, the literary community has to stop behaving as if, well, “there might be something there.” Steven Galloway was never “charged” with anything; he was the victim of unsubstantiated allegations made by people of scant credibility for dubious reasons. The question now is, what is to be done? While I am glad arbitration awarded him some money, it does not begin to make up for the damage to his writing career, his teaching career, his emotional well-being, his family, his earning capacity, and the simple human right to go about your business without being railroaded and villified. Publishers, agents, editors, universities, and fellow writers must come forward and invite this man back into the literary and educational communities.

Thank you for writing this. It is the first summary of what happened that truly makes sense. I was completing a degree when this story first broke. I was appalled at the way the administration handled the case, and completely shocked by the behaviour of the staff and students within the department.

MC even appears to have used a (possibly, dare I say probably) false allegation against a different man to screw him out of a job.

The supporting evidence is all there in what she asked Galloway to do. 1) don’t disclose it, and 2) just make sure the guy doesn’t get the position. Why would she not want it disclosed? So it wouldn’t get back to him that this was the reason he didn’t get the position, perhaps? Galloway was just supposed to listen, believe and pull some strings through backchannels without mentioning it to anyone, and her friend would be a shoo-in.

Super clean, no investigation, no possibly having to answer difficult questions or present any evidence. No having to contend with the accused’s denials or possible alibis. And her buddy gets the position.

Anyone who thinks this doesn’t happen needs to give their heads a shake. There are women out there (and a few men) who will make these life destroying accusations for the most ridiculous reasons.

Unprepared for your bar exams? “I need more time, I’m still traumatized from a rape.” (real case, multiple rape accusations)

He’s going for custody of the kids? “How could you give them to a rapist, your honor?” (real case(s))

Caught by your husband having sex in a truck with another man? “No! Honey! It’s not what you think! He’s raping me!” (real case, the husband shot the man to death, wife was convicted for the homicide)

Flunked out of university and need an excuse for your parents? “I was raped.” (real case)

Had consensual sex with 4 guys at a party and need something to tell your bf who you didn’t expect to be waiting at your dorm room when you went home all dishevelled? “They raped me.” (real case)

Got picked up by the cops AGAIN, and they’re talking about putting you in a psych ward AGAIN? “I was raped.” (real case, she never faced punishment for it, went on to commit arson, child endangerment and murder)

Don’t want to pay for a cab, and know the cops will give you a ride for free? “Rape.” (real case)

Hooked up with a guy, run into him a few days later and he’s struggling to remember your name? “Hey guys. See that guy over there? He raped me.” (real case, guy was beaten up)

Guy doesn’t want to be your girlfriend? “Rape.” (real case, guy was 15, was beaten within an inch of his life by a vigilante while delivering papers)

Guy doesn’t seem interested in dating you, but you’re really crushing on him? “Hey, this guy Haven Monahan set me up to be gang raped at a fraternity initiation ceremony. Do you feel sorry enough for me to go out with me now?” (real case)

Annoyed because your friends ditched you when you were out clubbing? “I was raped. Don’t you bitches feel bad now?” (real case)

Annoyed because the cab driver told you to put out your cigarettes, and want to make him sorry? “He totally groped us!” (real case)

Want to smear the college young republican’s club and make a name for yourself? Make a fake facebook account and post a threatening sexualized comment referencing yourself, then organize rallies and marches to protest sexual violence. (real case, she had previously been convicted of threatening a former employer with a gun)

Want your husband to agree to move to a better neighborhood and he’s resisting? “Hey, best friend, can you put on these boxing gloves, rough me up and help me stage a home invasion and violent rape?”

You read enough of these cases and the motivations behind making false complaints of sexual misconduct, and the lengths some women will go to to stage an assault (including injuring themselves, having themselves beaten up, cutting themselves, etc), and “listen and believe” goes out the window. Are all complainants lying? No. Are most of them lying? Probably not.

But I find it hard to believe there’s a subset of disturbed or sociopathic men out there who are willing to hold women down and have sex with them against their will and NOT consider there is also a subset of disturbed or sociopathic women out there who are prepared to make false allegations of sexual misconduct, either publicly, to police or to friends/coworkers.

Particularly when there is a social media mob out there prepared to viciously attack anyone who expresses scepticism of their claims or makes any comment on the importance of due process, and particularly when it’s so rare that even verifiably and provably false accusations of sexual misconduct are prosecuted.

Soner Yasa, the Edmonton cab driver who asked the women in his cab to put out their cigarettes and had dashcam evidence that exonerated him on the spot to the responding officer never saw his accusers charged with a crime, despite the fact that the accusers whipped a crowd of drunk friends into a dangerous frenzy with their allegations, and despite the fact that they repeated their allegations to the responding officer. He had to sue his accusers in civil court after the police refused to charge them.

Galloway’s accusers and some of the other women in this narrative make me ashamed to be female.Their vindictive, spiteful and mendacious behaviour driven apparently by maliciousness fits exactly the sterotype of the irrational woman controlled by emotion instead of reason. It is this stereotype which has for centuries held women back, by giving men an excuse to deny women power and respect. Those of us who have fought to bring women out of the shadow of the myth of female emotion and irrationally are being betrayed by happenings such as those outlined.

Never take on the guilt of someone else, simply because they belong to the same group as you, be that sex, nationality, sexual orientation, race etc. That what’s identitarians want; like the feminists who want to make all men responsible for male violence. There’s no such thing as collective guilt, nor should there be collective shame.

But I can’t help feeling somewhat guilty about being male when I read awful stories about men killing children in custody dispute cases. I think it helps to remember that individual variation within a gender is usually always larger than mean differences between genders, so that there is no necessary contradiction for example between:

(1) Almost all extremely physically aggressive people are male.

(2) About 40% of women (something like this) are more physically aggressive than the average male.

Both genders should recognize that they have tendencies which while can be functional in some contexts but dysfunctional in other contexts, and try to sort this out as best they can.

“Almost all extremely physically aggressive people are male.”
Any reliable source for this sweeping statement? Plenty of physically abused children, injured by their mothers, would disagree. Facts:
The Child Family Community Australia reports, “A British retrospective prevalence study of 2.669 young adults aged 18-24 (May-Chahal & Cawson, 2005) found that mothers were more likely than fathers to be responsible for physical abuse 49% of incidents compared to 40%).”
Other sites that are trying to raise awareness in this area will bombard you with statistics. Breaking the silence, for instance, says 71% of children killed by one parent are killed by their mothers, 60% of those victims are boys.
DHHS data in the UK shows that of children abused by one parent between 2001 and 2006, 70.6% were abused by their mothers, 29.4% were abused by their fathers.

The main difference is that they’re treated with comparatively kid gloves in the press and by the public.

I recall one case from the US. An African American woman killed her children, then herself. The initial coverage noted that the father had been attempting for years to get custody of the children, and it speculated that perhaps she was trying to protect them from an abusive father in the only way she could.

Really? That’s the go-to assumption? Not that the dad was trying so hard to get custody because he maybe knew the mom was unstable and a danger to his kids? That it was taking him years because she could paint him in the courts as the dangerous party because he’s male, and because the courts seem to require over the top proof that a mother is unfit before they’ll give custody to dad?

Initial interviews with neighbors were all, “She was a good mom, she just slipped through the cracks.” “She did her best, but she didn’t have any help.” “She was so scared of losing those kids.”

Anyway, I tried googling the case (mother kills children self custody battle), but google is just spitting out case after case after case of different mothers doing exactly that, that I can’t find it again.

Also, when it comes to physically aggressing against one’s own kids, moms are the majority of offenders.

No need to be ashamed about being male any more than I’m ashamed of being female.

Completely agree. And women who make false allegations of rape to advance their careers or get revenge on former lovers are also doing serious harm to real sexual assault victims. People who actually care about justice for women should be shouting to have this “MC” character charged as a criminal, not making her out to be some sort of “hero”.

A detailed and well reasoned article. Being a newcomer to Canada and not being familiar with Mr Galloway’s work, I had not heard of this case until Margaret Atwood’s essay. It unfortunately brought back very dark memories as something very similar happened to someone I am close with. Consequently I never believe “all women”. Such an idea seems preposterous to me now that I know the devastation caused by false accusations. Every time a woman makes a false accusation it erodes all the effort put in by earlier feminists in helping actual victims of sexual assault. There is something so narcissistic, so pathetic, so damaging, so abhorrent about these women who levy false accusations. MC had obviously done it before and it worked in getting her friend hired in the department. It’s a sad society that devalues the principles of natural justice. I can’t believe UBC didn’t think anything was wrong with appointing one of the main instigators of the complaints as an investigator. But then I really shouldn’t be so surprised. Reading that was like dejavu. False accusations have a devastating effect on the victim’s life (I.e. the accused) and their family’s life. It is truly traumatic and life altering. I hope Mr Galloway and his family are able to heal and move forward (despite the pathetic settlement).

Certainly not untouched after this articles depicting all of the women as witches bitches who arr psychologically damaged. It simply cannot be everone s fault. If SG had behaved in a professional and etical way non of this would have happened.

I’m rather surprised that nobody has taken the effort to publicly identify her. After all there can’t have been that many women, in the UBC School that match the description ” a former professor in her 40s,” at the time of the accusation.

That is one of the most frightening and depressing horror stories I have ever read. How does this kind of dark mental-spiritual disease overtake a university community? How does cowardice and falsehood and sheer foolishness come to rule over so many minds? How can UBC faculty and leaders live with themselves?

One small precious act of resistance here is to speak up for the presumption of innocence and the right to due process. Simple but profound and civilizing principles.

I will fall asleep tonight thinking about the times I have been wrongly silent and have gone along. I will think, too, of the Harvard admissions staff who know what they are supposed to do when they rate the “personalities” of Asian American applicants and so practice the racism required of them. It’s so subtle and natural and so right to go along without questioning. I am not going to get much sleep tonight.

Almost all of the women in the story seem to possessed by damaging ideological presuppositions that feed into destructive and negative pre-existing personality traits. This is why this modern ‘social justice’ movement is so dangerous. It’s not about justice. It’s about damaged people feeding their own bitterness and resentment and having dangerous simplistic interpretations of human beings and society take over their thinking.

And because they also see the world as purely a power game, it naturally follows that they themselves becomes power-seekers by any means. And the scary thing is western societies seem increasingly inclined to give these deeply untrustworthy and troubled actors the power they seek.

So: Psychological problems you blame on the world and not yourself + ideological possession + lust for power = toxic SJW willing to ruin a person’s reputation without any concern for truth or justice.

Agreed. I’ve found that the most ardent identarian crusaders are almost all badly messed up people. Deeply unhappy childhoods. Resentful. Narcissistic. And as Eric Hoffer pointed out in True Believer, it’s these unhappy, insecure people who are drawn so powerfully to mass movements. To dogma, tribalism, and the mob pursuit of scapegoats.

It’s frankly terrifying that such tempests of irrational fear and hatred can be so easily whipped up in the very institutions we expect to foster truth and reason.

The Western legislation did not see the Twitter Justice coming.
Freedom of expression can cause immense damages when misused by pathological, malevolent or criminal minds. Galloway’s 170 000 dollars, is that a reasonable price for having his life destroyed?
Now in Canada the Wilfrid Laurier University is facing legal action from Dr. Jordan Peterson and Lindsay Shepard, a teaching assistant who went public with her unfair treatment in the unit.

They are suing for millions.
That’s something Galloway should try if he ever gets himself back together again.

“Freedom of expression” doesn’t seem to be the issue here but rather slander & libel. Of course we are “free” to express our opinions but these people are lying about facts, not just expressing opinions.

This Kafka-comes-to-life case enabled by the Canadian literati and an academic elite as well as the administration of UBC just confirms what JBP has said many times: anyone can become a nazi. And the stasi at Laurier are amateurs in comparison.

Two other takeaways, Montalbano ex-chair of UBC’s B of G feels like a fool for donating 2 mil $ in cash to UBC to hire an SJW and Galloway had a really, really, really shitty lawyer to settle for a lousy $167,000.

Steven Galloway, there’s a lawyer you should meet, the same one Lindsay Shepherd and Peterson are using.

Brian Bosworth, isn’t it a non-sequitur to claim that this “confirms [that] anyone can become a nazi“? Clearly the behaviour of Galloway’s accusers, even if entirely malicious, would not come close to being at the same level as that of the Nazis. It is ironic that an incident that should remind us all to be careful to avoid moral panics, witch hunts, & tribalism has led you to identify a group of enemies “the Canadian literati and an academic elite as well as the administration of UBC” and hurl the ultimate slur at them.

I think there is a reasonable argument to be made that the behaviour of the people that Brian is pointing to is ABSOLUTELY comparable to what the mid-level nazis, those who were “just following orders” did.

Utterly sickening. In cases like this I heartily wish karma existed, so that the false accusers and the administration who railroaded Steven Galloway would get precisely what they deserve. Sadly, karma does not exist and so these people get to continue to act smug about the evil they’ve done, which is – frankly – infuriating.

I do take exception to this part of the piece:

“The implication here is that Boyd acted as a stand-in for how our legal system fails women when it comes to sexual abuse. And, to be fair to Rooney, the phenomenon she describes can be very real. As Globe & Mail reporter Robyn Doolittle authoritatively showed in her 2017 series, Unfounded, Canadian police officers dismiss about 20 percent sexual-assault claims as baseless.”

The fact that 20% of claims being dismissed as baseless does not prove or even imply that the legal system fails women. If a police officer interviews an accuser and finds her accusation to be baseless, the claim SHOULD be dismissed. That is the criminal justice system working properly. If that had happened in the Galloway case, then an innocent man would have been spared unnecessary agony.

I disagree. I think it was a good point to mention that for legitimate claims of sexual assault there is enormous suspicion faced by the claimant. It’s understandable as a part of any investigation to ask tough questions, but for a survivor it can be absolutely devastating to have your trauma be invalidated. It’s why many women stay silent when they have been assaulted.

My friend was almost raped by a foreign student the day before he left Canada. He wrestled her to the ground and tried to rip her pants down while she fought to get him off. She managed to run away but was badly shaken by the incident. She reported it to the police immediately, but in several interviews they tried to poke holes in her story (“Are you sure it wasn’t consensual?” “Why’d you go out with him that night?” “Did this actually happen?”) She was in tears recounting these insulting and painful questions. In the end, because he had left Canada, there was nothing they could do.

I’m glad the writer included this point. These things aren’t cut and dry. There are many complicated and conflicting forces at play. I already see some Peterson/anti-SJW people here trying to make this a simple women vs men or left vs. right argument. Sorry, but there were men noted in this article who supported the witch hunt and there were progressive women like Margaret Atwood who courageously stood for due process.

If there is any lesson in this tragic story, is that reduction to cheap dichotomies doesn’t help us. We need to support claimants of sexual abuse, but we need due process to assess each case based on facts too. It’s not one or the other!

My point was that due process is violated when we “believe all women” regardless of the truth of their claims. Claims should be investigated by police (not by someone’s employer), and dropped if they are false. This is not a man vs. woman issue, but a justice vs. injustice issue.

“I already see some Peterson/anti-SJW people here trying to make this a simple women vs men or left vs. right argument.”
…

The ones who decry Peterson regularly produce quotes out of context and then ascribe totally in-accurate views to him, caricaturing in order to villify and discredit. Invariably, one just has to listen to about five minutes around the quote, and it becomes clear that the so-called gotcha is nothing of the sort.

If anyone is oversimplifying the discussion, it is you. There are plenty of leftists who are vaguely aligned with Peterson. Look at Brett Weinstein, Richard Dawkins, Dave Rubin, on the left. Haidt, and Sam Harris are on the right, but still rather aligned as well. The so-called Intellectual dark web is exactly the group that tries to eshew the dichotomies you decry. The fact is, the SJ ideology is anti-scientific, racist quasi religious dogma that actively suppresses discussion, so that it can’t even improve. It does need to die, and it is one of the primary sources of intolerance that stymies real progress.

It is possible to be for civil/gay/gender rights and be anti-SJW, just as it is possible to wish for a caring society but not believe that socialism is the way to achieve it. In fact that is the mainstream view in the Peterson/Anti-SJW circles. Your caricaturing of the views of such groups is exactly the sort of unhelpful dichotomizing you claim to be decrying.

One needs to probe further. Does “baseless” mean the police conclude the alleged victim is making it all up or merely that there is not enough evidence to prosecute? Police and prosecutors often do not pursue cases against people they strongly suspect may be guilty because they don’t have evidence that would hold up in court. Being skeptical is part of their job.

I agree Doolittle’s series was extremely biased and was more of a propaganda piece than anything else. She did not even bother interviewing front-line officers as to why they decide what they decide. The only support she came up with for 20% being “wrong” is that it is a higher rate than for other crimes. Of course other crimes are by definition different so there was no reason to expect that the “unfounded” rate would be similar. I also found it quite peculiar that almost every example case she came up with involved a woman who was blackout drunk at the time of the alleged incident.

After MC’s first unsubstantiated claim of sexual assault, “The candidate [who she claimed had sexually assaulted her] did not get the job [due to MC’s request to Galloway], and instead the position was given to the aforementioned Nancy Lee, who at the time held a year-to-year position, and who is now a tenure-track faulty member “. There’s a pattern evident, not just of false claims of sexual assault or rape, but of false claims which interfere with the accused’s career. In the first instance, it was Lee who benefited; who benefited from Galloway being removed due to the false accusation of rape?

The settlement seems paltry and half-hearted, given they way the man was treated, and the lack of follow-up on the false claim by MC shows a lack of will to put the record straight.

Almost all of the women in the story seem to possessed by damaging ideological presuppositions that feed into destructive and negative pre-existing personality traits. This is why this modern ‘social justice’ movement is so dangerous. It’s not about justice. It’s about damaged people feeding their own bitterness and resentment and having dangerous simplistic interpretations of human beings and society take over their thinking.

And because they also see the world as purely a power game, it naturally follows that they themselves becomes power-seekers by any means. And the scary thing is western societies seem increasingly inclined to give these deeply untrustworthy and troubled actors the power they seek.

So: Psychological problems you blame on the world and not yourself + ideological possession + lust for power = toxic SJW willing to ruin a person’s reputation without any concern for truth or justice.

The article foreshadows those same power-hungry, ‘social justice’, reductionist women to whom you alluded, and who dominate the lengthy Galloway inquisition that followed. After the

resignation of its president, Arvind Gupta, UBC’s Jennifer Berdahl, professor in Leadership Studies in Gender and Diversity, published a blog post in which she opined that “Gupta lost the masculinity contest among the leadership at UBC, as most women and minorities do…

Gupta was a former dept chair of computer science and efforts at UBC were focused on academic faculty rather than administrators, which was a source of controversy.

Board of Governors member Montalbano called her on the day of the “masculinity contest” post. Berdahl promptly brought charges that Montalbano had infringed on her academic freedom, which was investigated and found baseless. It didn’t matter; he was told to leave. (Remember that Montalbano donated $2 million of his own money to fund Berdahl’s professorship. He wan’t from wealth. His father was a Britannia miner and his mother a short order cook.) I hope it isn’t a recurring theme at UBC, 1) MC, the AC19 (AC7? none) vs Galloway; 2) Berdahl vs Montalbano. The toxic disregard for truth and power is only heightened by the fact that they have nothing to lose, nor any penalty for false accusation.

I wonder what Foucault might have to do (or even incited? over his grave?) with all this, just this year his -Confessions of the chair- came out, 34 yrs after his tragic death. In it I read, where he speaks over the risks of confessions on hidden sexuality: Le dire-vrai du parresiaste prend des risques de l’hostilite, de la guerre, de la haine et de la mort. It might have been the reverse even: le dire-non vrai, because, also to lie about the truth can have these consequences.

Now is the time for his wife to apply the same female-created flimsy standards that reject any due process in family court, where she can grab a chunk of that $167K and a tax-free child support annuity in the process.

I’m sure she can use the “evidence” from his UBC travails as “proof” he is an unfit father, hence she deserves full custody along with maximum child support.

However….but….., now in even in the NL, the preoccupation with gender and identity seems to become somewhat tired, I just read in my neswpaper , in an article on gender in literature: – Please, stop copying the American discourses of the type Gender and Identity Politics, better write something genuine of your own experience-. And that in a country that has followed now more than half a century that adored USA (before, it was Germany, but they lost the war, of course).

Why the everloving fuck is the suffering of someone in a foreign country five thousand years ago at the hands of people who aren’t Stan justification for hypothetically punishing Stan for something he hypothetically didn’t deserve.

And this is only one case that came to be public knowledge. Self-serving university processes have destroyed others with their mishandling of (false) claims. They have no ability or authority to oversee claims of sexual assault – all cases should immediately be turned over to the court.

Under Canadian law, damages are only awarded for proven costs, not for what might be. For example, if a surgeon fucks up and you are off work for a year, you get a year’s salary; you do not get to argue that this delayed your promotion or prevented you from getting a new research grant and therefore had effects on your lifetime earnings. From this, the payments from your insurance would be deducted in arriving at the cost to you. Punitive damages are not awarded. Awards for ‘pain and distress’ are not large and most would be dealt with in Small Claims Court where legal representation is not necessary.

I know it is an unpopular opinion, but I believe sexual assault should be treated like any other form of assault. All kinds of assault cause damage – my teenaged son was certainly very angry and upset when he was thumped and robbed when he was foolish enough to be in the wrong part of town alone late at night. That was much worse than being groped in a crowded bus (my own teenage experience that I do not consider ‘sexual assult’). I learned to be more careful, and so did he, and he was certainly more physically injured and distressed. Rumination on experiences that are embarrassing, upsetting and sometimes physically injuring is the worst response, and it would appear that the METOO (and other victimhood movements) encourages unhealthy rumination on bad experiences. This applies even in the case of violent rape. This is what Jordan Peterson would tell a client of any sexual persuasion – the bottom line is being a victim diminishes you and your potential, expecially when you ruminate about something that happened to your grandmother.

// the bottom line is being a victim diminishes you and your potential, expecially when you ruminate about something that happened to your grandmother.//
So valid, but when people like this Rooney wear their past trauma like a honor badge and aim to profit from it, what can you do? This badge seems to make them honest without doubt and makes champions of nobody.
People like Jordan Peterson can see the long-term harm of this, but it is a short-term bonanza!

I can’t get this horrifying tale out of my head. The behaviour of the women involved and the UBC authorities who supported them is unconscionable. I can only attribute the bizarre actions of Stephen Galloway’s close colleagues to a despicable self interest which very quickly generated a firestorm of mass hysteria. Social media is a potent crucible for the mass hysteria that engulfed Stephen Galloway and shamefully impacted his career. I have read a couple of different articles on UBC;s surrender to specious complaints. The recent treatment of John Furlong comes to mind. As someone said earlier, this story needs a better ending for Stephen Galloway and his family.

With respect, the John Furlong case is very, very, very different—the complaints were not specious, but the case was very badly reported in the Georgia Straight and with bias by the freelance writer. The publicity it generated and the racial angle that the writer affixed to it attracted several additional complaints that were truly specious and rightly dismissed, along with the original complainants’ more tenable and believable complaints. In defence of *both* the complainants *and* the accused in that case, corporal punishment in schools was both legal and ubiquitous when Furlong was teaching; not just in Indigenous schools but in mainstream public schools and the poshest private schools. It would be astounding to me if he had *not* done what the original complainants attested; as you can surmise, unpacking this would require another article of this length and depth, but the question pertinent to both of these two cases is: Why are we letting individual and collective-demographic anger infiltrate our justice system and our assessments of who is right and wrong? And what’s with this obsessive need to presume guilt and to inflict the fiercest possible punishment?

Indeed, when I was in school back in the sixties the teacher slapped people’s faces and strapped them at the front of the class. This was normal then. The whole John Furlong case was just like this Galloway one….. assumptions of guilt made before any evidence ruins a career. The people who made the false accusations should be charged with mischief, at least.

Well, part of why the Furlong case is different is that it’s unlikely the original complainants were making a false accusation, because way back when Furlong was teaching, corporal punishment was not only legal but encouraged. That’s why I don’t think it would be fair to persecute Furlong, but I don’t doubt the original complainants. (I have grave issues with the ideologically minded reporter, and the subsequent complainants that turned out to be lying, however.) The Galloway case is different that way: the MC and AC were established to be tellers of falsehoods, making an accusation of a relatively recent event that comprised what has always been a serious crime. But there is not only evidence of that alleged crime; there is lots of evidence that it was an outright fabrication.

It seems to me that SG failed to adopt a professional and ethical standard of behaviour as he ought to have done given his position. All events stemmed from this. To now focus on another round of he said she said and to now call the women in question crazy and vengeful which will polarize people is sad. SG failed his students by his lack of ethics sexual or not and until he adresses that as the main issue of his downfall I can see no way forward for him and that would be the biggest failure for him.

Life isn t fair but pursuing a narrative of victimization is not serving SG in terms of moving on. What does SG want? If he wants to be right
about how wronged he was or does he want to transform this experience and create a different life. It is up to him.

Meah Martin, Galloway in fact has publicly addressed the affair and apologized for it, even though it arguably wasn’t against university regulations at the time and it certainly wasn’t illegal. Worth a serious reprimand by the Department? Maybe, probably. But do you consider it a fair consequence for such an affair, to be falsely and very publicly branded as a rapist and have your career and reputation vaporize?

His loss of position had nothing to do with any sexual behaviour consensual or not but it was because he failed to act in an ethical and professional matter hence the faculty assoc withdrew asking for his job back. I am not talkimg apology but merely pointong out that goingcwith the narrative about how unfair this was is not serving SG in transforming this event to create a new life. If he had acted in a manner that was etical and professional this would not have happen but by not doing all of these listed grievances listed by BC do not serve SG and furthure divides people in to believers and non believers rather than moving on.

You honestly believe his “loss of position had nothing to do with sexual behavior, consensual or not?” That the faculty withdrew their support because he violated an unwritten ethics code not to sleep with students? That’s not a credible interpretation of the events.

You seem to have misread the article. The university sacked Steven Galloway because he was accused of rape and they believed him. The accusation was false – there was no rape. It doesn’t follow that “If he had acted in a manner that was ethical and professional this would not have happened”. No doubt Galloway is seeking a way to move on; however what I would like to see is for justice to be done, and to be seen to be done. He was falsely accused, and the institution grievously mishandled the case: the accuser should face consequences, and the university should publicly acknowledge the lack of due process and establish procedures which prevent such a thing happening again. Why would this be useful? Well, it would probably provide some solace to a man who has been badly wronged; it would make something similar less likely to happen at UBC again; and it would discourage potential false complaints and complaint mishandling at other universities.

Meah Martin writes “His loss of position had nothing to do with any sexual behaviour consensual or not but it was because he failed to act in an ethical and professional matter”

SG had a consensual affair with a colleague. There is nothing wrong with that other than the fact that both of them were married. That’s a private matter between SG and his wife and none of the university’s business.

SG has apologized for this (unlike MC who lied outright and denied the affair) but there was no need to apologize to anyone other than SG’s wife. SG did absolutely nothing wrong as far as UBC is concerned. Does UBC make a habit of firing employees for infidelity?

Mr Galloway was not brought down by his own behaviour, but by a fraud committed by a group of womenaided by a bunch of fair weather friends, an incompetent and weak administration and the usual left-wing loonies who are programmed to believe any lies fed to them by the left-wing fascists intent on getting rid of any vestige of beauty and truth in life.
Sinistra delenda est!

“But given the totality of all the inconsistences in MC’s story, that does not seem plausible—especially since a small boat seems one of the most unsafe places imaginable for a woman to be with a man who supposedly had assaulted her previously.”

For those who don’t understand the allusion in Brendan’s last line: it’s from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
——————————
Dennis: Think about it. She’s out in the middle of nowhere with some dude she barely knows. She looks around her, what does she see? Nothing but open ocean. “Oh, there’s nowhere for me to run, what am I gonna do, say no?”

Mac: Okay…that seems really dark though.

Dennis: No, no, it’s not dark. You’re misunderstanding me, bro.

Mac: I think I am.

Dennis: Yeah, you are. ‘Cause if the girl said no, then the answer obviously is no. The thing is that she’s not gonna say no, she’d never say no…because of the implication.

Mac: Now, you said that word “implication” a couple of times. What implication?

Dennis: The implication that things might go wrong for her if she refuses to sleep with me. Now, not that things are gonna go wrong for her, but she’s thinking that they will.

Mac: But it sounds like she doesn’t wanna have sex with you.

Dennis: Why aren’t you understanding this? She doesn’t know whether she wants to have sex with me, that’s not the issue.

Mac: Are you gonna hurt women?

Dennis: I’m not gonna hurt these women, why would I ever hurt these women? I feel like you’re not getting this at all.

Mac: I’m not getting it.

Dennis: Goddamn.”
——————————
Worth watching a clip on Youtube for the tone and demeanor of the each character.

That would indeed start a fire storm of legal battles from the womenvwho jave been in this article been called liars witches mentally lacking so suits and counter suits..if SG wants a life again I would suggest he never speak of this again publically but rather sit in knowledge his lack of standards in dealing with students was his down fall he can of course keep having articles written in the belief that if je just explained it from his pov people will embrace him but that isn t how it works. It will never exonerate SG to defame the women.9

Meah Martin “from the womenvwho jave been in this article been called liars witches mentally lacking ”

The article weights the evidence which suggests that some women (MC and Rooney in particular) did lie.

1. MC lied about the existence of the affair which is proven by extensive e-mails.
2. Her rape tale extremely far fetched.
3. Rooney lied about there being 19 other women victims.
4. None of the alleged victims told stories of anything remotely resembling sexual assault.

This was a difficult read. Despite the clear bias (and writing in a manner that, to a certain degree, manipulates the reader – unlike that stalwart critic of Galloway’s no-due-process witch hunt, Margaret Atwood), the author makes a compelling case.
And I say this in spite of the fact that I don’t want to like Quillette, as no other than MRA/Incel patron saint Jordan Peterson has publicly praised it for being “real journalism”.
Life can be so complicated.

Ffs, Jordan Peterson is not the “MRA/Incel patron saint.” I’m getting so tired of reading this crap. It’s so incredibly insulting. I happen to be a fan of Peterson’s. I’m also a woman, a feminist, a liberal and a leftist; in other words, I’m as far from an MRA/Incel as you can imagine as are, I would guess based on my own observations, the vast majority of his fans. Please stop reading biased hit pieces on him and actually look into his work for yourself. It is sure to be a huge wake-up call as to the dishonesty of many in the media these days. And, yes, there are many fine articles on Quillette.
It’s really not that complicated, you’ve just been lied to.

Your comment on Peterson is far, far off base indicating you didn’t actually listen to what he has to say before forming your opinion. And MRA’s? Men getting together to talk about their rights? What insanity eh? Why next thing you know people will be saying Galloway should have had some rights.

Good point. It is always amazing to me how people who are politically partisan will use terms, that in themselves are quite neutral, to demonise people.
Calling someone a men’s rights activist has to be one of the more egregious of these attempts at blackguarding someone. \

Why is it so important to you, Meah, to have Galloway be in the wrong here? Why is it so important to you to protect his lying accusers and persecutors from the consequences of their actions? I don’t need to hear your answer, but it would be a salutary thing for you to meditate on yourself.

Looking at Meah’s comments throughout, I’d guess she participated in Galloway’s witch hunt either online or at UBC. I can’t imagine someone reading this story and deciding that SG deserved what he got.

I will bet that MC got busted by her spouse and lied about Galloway in a pathetic effort to squirm out of it. Very common. I am surprised that none of you eggheaded pencil necks spotted that. Yes I did say that, since it is the truth, nowhere else but where this demographic clusters would this kind of idiotic nonsense prevail, without getting street-called. It is a common, coarse crime she pulled, not some airy fairy fluffball drama.

That was my guess, too – MC got caught having an affair, and lied to avoid the shame and consequences of her actions. Lied to her husband and lied to Rooney. For artists chronicling the inner lives of modern people, you’d think creative writers would have some insight into how people really behave.

For many, it seems far easier to believe a man is a predatory, bestial rapist, than to consider that a woman lied about an affair to try to salvage her reputation. People do all sorts of ugly things – men and women.

It is of note that both MC and Rooney have themselves experienced abuse by other men. MC flees to the boat because she feels unsafe. Rooney is open about her past. We are shaped by our experiences in life. The desire to find a substitute (even innocent) object for feelings of vengeance and wrath is one of the carryovers from western culture’s Christian past. Galloway becomes the guilt bearer, who carries away the guilt of the community. Quite literally in this case. His innocence is irrelevant to the guilt relieving function he plays. He bears the guilt of the other men in the pasts of MC and Rooney, he bears the guilt of the men who abused those who make up the twitter mob. Due process, the enlightenment, rule of law, maybe even Jesus, all mitigate against this visceral desire that “someone must pay.” We ignore this powerful desire at our peril. One does wonder if due process can survive without a real or imagined Jesus who takes the guilt away so that the other innocents don’t have to.

Marms, I’ll quote from Section 11(d) of our country’s Charter of Rights and Freedom: “Any person charged with an offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal”. You’ll appreciate the wisdom of embracing this fundamental civil right for everyone if you yourself are ever falsely accused.

I don’t see where he was falsely accused. That’s conjecture. He’s not been proven guilty, but he’s innocent the way Ghomeshi was innocent.

I see men here wildly defending Galloway as men who are defending themselves because they know they have raped. What the law calls rape is very sketchy. I listen to the definition of women. Rape law in our culture is men’s rights law.

Here’s a guideline for you. Oh and by the way I have the deepest contempt for women who themselves defend and grovel up to men who defend a rapist.

You are effectively attacking all women here, marms, if you have contempt for women who stand up for basic human rights and if you consider my argument “grovelling”, as though I cannot think for myself. Presumably you have the same contempt for Mary Ellen Boyd, Margaret Atwood, and other strong women, and would like to revert to an earlier age when women were thought of as childlike creatures who never, ever, ever capable of fault or wrongdoing or mendacity—a pre-feminist view you seem to hold. Would you like us to be weak and stupid and grovel up to people like you who make defamatory statements like your last sentence?

marms, there doesn’t seem to be an “edit” option in the comments– i was adjust my comment of defamation to apply more tothe first line rather than the last line, which technically does not specify myself or the accused of this discussion, though it heavily implies. But I find your indirect misogyny and contempt for civil rights to be just nauseating—I’m outta here.

Basic human rights? You have a basic inability to read. Nowhere have I said Galloway did not deserve his “basic human rights”. But since he’d been trampling on the basic human rights of so many others, particularly women, it’s embarrassing to see you wave his rights around. Whatever UBC did or didn’t do (a sewer of his like-minded colleagues) the public has a “basic human right” to make their own decision about his behaviour.

@marms He lays out the case very clearly as to why it was very likely not rape. Namely, there is almost zero evidence to prove the accusation.

And instead of trying to make any logical rebuttal of his arguments, you call him (and many others) rapists. That is truly disgusting.

People like you are why I have a very strong natural doubt of any rape claim coming from a “feminist”. You not only eschew the legal definition of rape in favor of some BS you made up, but you ignore evidence and presume guilt.

Hi Marms, I read the Biting Beaver “rapist checklist” with great interest. I believe it might explain why MC believes she was raped, because along with several undeniable examples of rape, this checklist encompasses a huge variety of sexual activity that has been not only deemed part of regular human activity for literally millennia, but also activity that women have engaged in (having sex with a man while he’s drunk; nagging a man for sex.) Are we also rapists? One more thing: this checklist condemns the MC as an enabler of rapists: (assuming she was or believes to have been raped), to wit, #47: “If you choose to remain friends with a man who raped a woman, you are encouraging rape.” It has been factually established that MC had an affair with SG, a consensual affair that was later established to have taken place after the alleged rape (although she lied about it). So either MC is lying about the rape, or she is a rapist-encourager. Which is it? Has to be one or the other, according to your own supplied checklist.

Question – once the Boyd report proved them wrong and awarded the measly $160k to Galloway, why weren’t Rooney, MC et al reprimanded/fined by UBC? What disciplinary action was taken against the Lyon, Lee et al who spearheaded this witchhunt?

With the amount of influence social media is having on individual lives and businesses, is it time to take them seriously and put some guidlines/regulations around them?
For e.g., if someone accuses of rape, it gets flagged as “#AccusationNotVerdict” automatically! Accused should be able to take the accusation to court for defamation right away.

What the report stated was that on the balance of probabilties Galloway was right.
If the report had used the higher crimina standard, there would have been a higher chance that Galloway would have been believed.
Boyd also found that Rooneyy was without any credibility, which is as close to an accusation of lying that a judge can make.

“The implication here is that Boyd acted as a stand-in for how our legal system fails women when it comes to sexual abuse. And, to be fair to Rooney, the phenomenon she describes can be very real. As Globe & Mail reporter Robyn Doolittle authoritatively showed in her 2017 series, Unfounded, Canadian police officers dismiss about 20 percent sexual-assault claims as baseless.”

Um, forgive me for asking an inconvenient question, but how is this 20% figure evidence of “how our legal system fails women when it comes to sexual abuse,” absent independent evidence about how common baseless claims are?

It means that an overwhelming majority of accusations (80%) are taken seriously.
Note also that ‘unfounded’ does not necessarily mean the victim is not believed, but that eg. there is no useful evidence available or that the accusation comes from a third party (the latter often a bad sign). According to the Canadian police ‘unfounded’ does not equal ‘dismissed’ and further investigations may proceed.
I think Canada does pretty well there compared many other countries. (that does not imply at all there could and should be no need for improvement, or that there are no unfair ‘unfounded’ classifications, but Canada is far from the worst here).

It’s also a meaningless stat unless we can compare it the dismissal rate for other allegations that typically rely on the testimony of a single person. Blackmail and extortion would seem to be fair comparables. If the

What a dark and depressing story. I feel like he must have given up a bit out of despair…why not ask for a public apology? Reinstatement, even. UBC got off way too easy and now I’m sure they just pretend it never happened.

Dirk, I disagree on two points. Calling women the ‘underdog’ is a gross simplification that is wrong. Over our history and even today both the far majority of men and women were underdogs in the public sphere. And in the private sphere women always had a lot of power. Look at macho cultures where mothers have lots of power.
Second, you cannot right wrongs when the individuals differ. The idea that women deserve something extra because other women before them were wronged is at the heart of what is wrong with identity politics. The great innovation in the enlightened enlightenment was individualism.

I agree, Peter, that it should not be like that, but what I read and see around me (just listen only to Cathy Newman): women (and blacks, homosexuals, decolonized etc etc) feel ressentments against the ones who used to be (in reality or imagined) in power, identity then is the strategy to have more authority of preaching/lamenting. That we are all only private persons with feelings and guilt only where you yourself are involved, is just only a recent humanistic feature of our (western) culture, of course. The Russian sociologist and philosopher Alexandr Dugin , e.g., thinks quite differently on that.

Thank you Brad. A well written service to society and conscience, but I fear more is needed to break through “truthiness” and mod “justice.
Nate has the genesis of the motivation through story for the novel to follow.

Very interesting and amazingly detailed account Brad. A big THANKS for writing it!
I was very impressed with your reporting (upon finishing to read it an hour and a half later lol).
Hope you don’t mind me dropping in with my following caustic comment! lol.

Wow big surprise …precursor to #Metoo goes too far, UBC cowards and twits in the administration act like stupid weak kneed prats and cave to a ‘Crucible’ like scenario involving an over privileged self entitled bubble world woman (granted with seemingly sad psychological issues from an abusive childhood) and in so doing destroy a man’s reputation BEFORE hearing the FACTS.

Facts that incidentally eventually exonerate him and force UBC to award him with $167,000 in damages.

I call it ‘fucking bullshit’ – where of course the more overly polite commentators might be sheepish to use that kind of strong language in condemnation of calling out this kind of idiocy.

Twitter bomb this, all you politically over- correct fraudulent Twitter twits. I’m up for a good fight any day against your unjust, insane and ridiculous mob mentality and criminal excesses like this example of false accusation coming from certain elements of the ‘political correctness thought police’ and social media gang bangers together with the timid acquiescence by the milk toast UBC overseers that could have prevented this travesty at the outset.

1. “MC” should not be anonymous. She is not the victim here, she is the criminal perpetrator (dare I say, predator). Hiding the name of this criminal perpetrator is endangering the lives of others who are now being taught by her, and working with her. She should be named, so that others can protect themselves. In the United States, at least, making false criminal accusations is a felony crime. Though no one ever bothered to involved the *actual justice system* in this case, it seems to me, this woman ought to be subject to some sort of criminal charge for what she did to Galloway.

2. Despite the fact that what happened to Galloway was criminally unjust, Galloway is no “innocent”. He *cheated on his wife*, and was entirely willing to throw another colleague under the bus, on nothing but the hearsay of the woman with whom he was having an illicit affair. On that account, he deserved at least some comeuppance (and according to the accounts of the voicemail, here, it seems he may have realized that himself). However, I will not defend the total ruination he was subjected to, and I think $167,000 (roughly 2 years salary for a typical administrator), was a mere slap on the wrist for UBC. It should have been a figure in the millions.

3. UBC looks to me, to be a criminally toxic organization. I don’t know why any sane and healthy human being would consider working for such a place, or volunteer to be subjected to the so-called “educators” there. This story has added just one more brick to the wall that has been forming in my mind of late, against the idea of entering professional academia at all. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why I would want to take this kind of risk, or subject myself to these kinds of people, on a day to day basis. If I had to deal with people like this in the tech world, I would have quit and gone back to menial labor a long time ago.

To me giving one the benefit of the doubt doesn’t have to mean denying the other the benefit of the doubt. If I was an investigator I’d approach both with the benefit of the doubt, then balance the info shared by both parties for consistencies or lack there of, with any hard evidence that might exist.

The benefit of the doubt: I give them easily to all girls and women who feel harrassed, whether true or not, that’s so in our western culture since the cathari in France invented galantery in the 12th century (and nowhere else, be sure of that, at least, I can’t think of any other country or region where that ever happened).

In the NL, a woman who laments to be beaten by her husband, is immediately believed by the police, but a man who says so, is laughed at. Yes, this is the truth, and, logically so, it’s just Peterson’s Archetype.

“In general, I do give women accusing men of rape the benefit of the doubt, since statistics show that most accusations of this type are truthful”

“2-10%” are confirmed as false reports. That range appears to be a revised, “progressive”, one. Some range is confirmed as true. The bulk is indeterminate. So, no, it doesn’t show that most are true. Further these numbers are from the criminal law system. They are not from a “preponderance/balance of the evidence” system. Much less are they from a “preponderance” system that further lacks various elements of due process, and that is prominently stocked with members of the most absurd wave of feminism. (Check out Harvard’s state of the art.)

#metoo folks love to cite the fact that men are involved in the vast majority of physical violence. And it’s true! It’s the dark side of masculinity.

But these people seem to ignore the dark side of femininity. It’s this – destroying people with gossip and innuendo. And it’s just as, if not more, damaging than physical attacks. I would much rather be raped than accused of rape in the current environment. The former is horrible and emotionally destructive, but people feel for you and there is a support system, and generally you are seen as a victim. The latter is horrible and emotionally destructive, and your shot at a normal happy life is likely ruined. You are presumed guilty with no need for physical evidence to prove the presumption, and regardless of what happens you will have people who will hate you for the rest of your life.

There’s a reason it was the Salem Witch Trials, and not the Salem Wizard Trials. It was girls/women accusing other women (and eventually men) of being demonic. Women can destroy people with words, and right now society is letting them do it at will. We are counting on their good nature to provide restraint, and while most have that good nature, many do not. Just like many men don’t have the restraint not to physically attack when angry. The difference being that with men we as a society take a much stronger stance on stopping their bad behavior from destroying people.

The fact that the author can write this excellent article showing exactly how at least 10 “complaints” lied knowingly and repeatedly, to destroy a man who had done absolutely nothing to them (likewise the aside where unsupported sexual allegations were used to help a friend get a job at the expense of the slandered candidate), and still quote that specious hit piece as “authoritative” boggles me. To quote from the article:

Insp. Dennison says he doesn’t want to speculate about what might lie behind the comparatively high rate of sexual-assault unfounded cases at some other police services, but he notes that the Winnipeg service has a number of policies in place that might be contributing to its low unfounded numbers.

Chief among them is a governing philosophy that false reporting doesn’t happen that often. “If a report of sexual assault is received by the police service, the only way that it would be categorized as unfounded is if we could prove that it probably didn’t happen. Which is rare, right? You don’t get a lot of people reporting this type of serious offence if there’s not some sort of basis to it,” he says.

Note the circular logic: They have relatively low “unfounded” cases… Because they are a priori certain that relatively few cases are unfounded (unless they can somehow prove the negative, something that they are strongly discouraged from doing). Of course the numbers go down when leadership insists that they must and the administrative punishment that is mandatory training will increase until they do. Yet their lower statistics are then used as support in implying that other police services are inflating their numbers of unfounded claims. I’m not very familiar with Canadian law, but is “assumed guilty until proven innocent” the norm for all crimes, or just sexual ones?

The rest of the Globe & Mail article rests on a few isolated anecdotes and the oddly unquestioned work of Dr. Lori Haskell, Trauma Psychologist, who despite making quite a career out of alleging that traumatic events impair victim memory in very specific ways that make incoherent memory or contradictions in testimony something to be expected (thereby invalidating cross-examination as a usable tool for the defense), has not published a single peer reviewed paper I can find that substantiates those claims. Bluntly, it’s “#BelieveAllWomen all the way down this rabbit hole.

I’m sorry to see that Brad Cran pursued this particular case deeply enough to show the fundamental mechanisms and incentives that drive false accusations of sexual misconduct, yet the experience apparently didn’t teach him to even question the larger narrative that a case like this is rare.

According to the most recent study I could find in the US, unfounded/false allegations of rape were at least 5x higher than false allegations for any other category of crime. Even that only counts reports actually made to law enforcement. The numbers for administrative cases through campus proceedings that have subsequently been overturned by actual courts is far higher. As this case perfectly demonstrates, false accusations may be made to devastating effect through strictly social and administrative channels, for personal benefit, and with little or no personal consequences for those who make false accusations, most especially in the academy.

His reputation and career were already irreparably destroyed after his employer enabled a lynch mob to pursue vigilante “justice”. Why exactly would he fight to stay in that situation? It’s not like he would ever be allowed by the “believe all women” Twitter mob to ever teach a class or mentor students.

He settled, and got the fuck out of that situation. It’s probably the only way he could go that allowed some semblance of normalcy and sanity.

Why would he want to go back and teach in a department full of snakes who had railroaded him out of a job? Why would anyone want to be around people like that all day? Much better to take the money and get the hell out of that situation. I would.

I think this whole sad saga illustrates that complaints of sexual assault should not be left to amateurs (the academic administrators), but to professionals (police, judges). How different would this story have been if the UBC had immediately commissioned Judge Boyd (or a like professional) to investigate?

nicky I totally agree. The universities might want to offer counseling to alleged victims but the institutional response to sexual assault or harassment (which is also a crime) should be “Please file a police report.”

A cautionary and salutary story of the dangers of anonymous whisper campaigns. I remember laughing at communist East Germany for its acceptance of secret denunciations, thinking we in the west were so much better and it could never happen here. Transparent accountability is the basis of justice.

@Bob: The motive invoked to justify Galloway’s firing was “breach of trust”; it’s hard to defend against such a vague accusation.

@LAW: Galloway’s $167,000 was an award — not a settlement. A settlement is usually given in exchange of signing a “Final Release and Discharge” absolving a former employer of any future legal liability. This means that Galloway still has to option to sue UBC for additional damages.

I tell you what: I’ve had no respect for this grifter since he ripped off a man’s life story for his first book The Cellist of Sarajevo. He didn’t even have the courtesy to advise and ask permission. And when he was outed on this, he got ugly. Looks like he has a habit of taking what he wants–with impunity.

Are you saying “he got what he deserved” in the UBC case? It sure sounds like it so why not just be honest and say it. But I’ll tell you what: only a sociopath would have no empathy for what happened to him as described in this article.

“Canadian author Elizabeth Wellburn worked with Smailović to create the children’s book Echoes from the Square (1998). Another Canadian author, Steven Galloway, based a character on Smailović in his bestselling 2008 novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo. In the book, an unnamed cellist plays every day at 4:00 pm for 22 days, always at the same time and location, to honour the 22 people killed by a mortar bomb while they queued for bread on May 26, 1992. The account, including the time of the mortar attack, is fictional. Smailović publicly expressed outrage over the book’s publication. He said, “They steal my name and identity,” and added that he expected damages, an apology and compensation.”

Excellent article. I am so proud to be European, we seem to be safe from the irrational thinking that led to this witch hunt, for the time being. I would never ever consider attending university in Canada or the US.

What a ghastly event and congratulations to those who stood up for Galloway. Seems to me that was a really brave thing to do.
Among other things what really stands out is the incompetence of the university administration and this is well detailed for a number of stages during this process. But are we really surprised. This sort of incompetence and total lack of spine is bobbing up all over. There is too much reliance on the ‘process’ and not enough people with experience and skill using common sense and wisdom. It seems to me that university is a toxic work environment where you continually have to watch you back as well as your ps and qs. Its where your colleagues are at best fair weather friends. Its where your career and your achievements are an illusion that will count for nothing if you cross certain invisible lines.
It also seems to me that UBC should drop its Creative Writing courses. The whole thing should be dismantled and its students given library passes and told to go read great writers in their own time. A university may produce great creative writers but I suspect it is the great education provided by the university that enables this achievement.

Canadian police dismissing 20% of sexual assault claims as unfounded is unremarkable.

There aren’t many studies that look at what the false accusation rate for rape is (much less sexual assault), but if you look at those, and listen to the personal estimates of law enforcement personnel (very much including women), you converge on a figure of about 40%.

Accusations by a woman against a man of sexual misconduct are a potent weapon. The fact that women who make false accusations are virtually never prosecuted means it’s also a low-risk armament. We shouldn’t be surprised that it’s brandished quite frequently. Especially not when there are so many documented cases of false accusations leveraged for absurdly trivial reasons (not wanting to fail a test that wasn’t studied for, not wanting to pay taxi fare, not wanting to admit to being sexually active, etc.).